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i«uai»n I iiil illl I I I —im i ll l II IIMMIMMIIII—II IIIHIH lllll Ull I H III II ■ U IMI I ■ 



OUR COUNTRY: 



ITS PERIL AND ITS DELIVERANCE. 



ADVANCE SHEETS 






DANVILLE QUARTERLY REVIEW, FOR MARCH, 18GL 



REV. ROBERT J, BREOKIXKIDGE, D.D., LL.D., 

PROFESSOR IS DANVILLE THEOLOGICAL SEMINABT. 



CINCINNATI: 

PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE OF THE DANVILLE REVIEW, 
So. 25 WEST FOURTH STREET. 

1861. 



s 



. 7? 










1861.] OUR COUNTRY. 73 



Art. IV. — Our Country — Its Peril — Its Deliverance. 

I. The Spirit of Anarchy: Its Rise — Progress — Present State 

— Nature — Tendency. 

II. Grounds of Hope and Effort : Statement of the Facts, 
Principles, and Considerations, on which the Preservation of the 
Union depends. 

III. Negro Slavery : As the Cause or Occasion of Sedition, Anar- 
chy, and Revolution — Considered in the light of our Civil and 
Political Institutions, — of the Law of Nature, — and of the 

Word of God. 

IV. Amicable Settlement : Statement of the Case — Relation of 
the North and the South to the Rendition of Fugitive Slaves, and 
to Slavery in the Territories, — Rights and Duties of both Parties, 

— Amicable Settlement as Simple and Equitable, as it is Wise 
and Patriotic. 

V. The Doctrine of Coercion : Its Abuse — Nature — Relation 
to the actual State of Affairs — The Power, Duty, and Responsi- 
bility of the General Government. 

1. 1. What we propose is, ^rs^, to make such a statement of 
the condition of affairs as may be of use to upright men, in en- 
abling them to determine what ought to be attempted, and what can 
be accomplished, in the way of preventing the ruin of their coun- 
try ; and, secondly, to make clear to all men, the position of a vast 
party in this country, who desire and who deserve, in all possible 
events, to be understood by posterity — and who, even if their 
principles are now overborne and their counsels are now rejected, 
may, if they are faithful to themselves, retrieve from the wreck of 
their country, whatever survives when the period of exhaustion 
shall come upon its destructive madness. 

2. There is no lesson which the universal course of human 
affairs teaches so thoroughly, as their own instability. And yet 
there is no lesson so hard for men to learn ; no lesson so preg- 
nant of results, and so little heeded. How faithful ought men to 
be when overtaken by defeat and adversity — if they would con- 
sider that defeat and adversity, with courage and wisdom, are a 
preparation for triumph ? How just and forbearing ought men 
to be in the midst of power and prosperity, if they would consider 



74 OUR COUNTRY. [March, 

that power and prosperity, in the degree that they are corrupt, 
make the road to destruction broad and sure ? And how immense, 
how unexpected, how effectual are the resources of God, in the 
accomplishment of what he ordains to be results of human 
conduct ? 

3. Look at the actual position of public affairs throughout this 
great nation — consider whither they are tending — consider 
whence that tendency has arisen — consider by what means it is 
propagating itself: and then reflect upon the unexpected and ex- 
traordinary means by which ruin is overtaking every interest and 
hope of the country — and upon the absolute completeness of the 
ruin, when these means shall have worked their full effect. In a 
state of security apparently perfect, and of prosperity apparently 
complete — a small and fierce party, scattered through some of 
the Northern States, commenced a systematic and persistent agi- 
tation connected with the Black Race on this continent ; and in 
the heart of their system lay this idea, that laws and institutions 
and rights and duties and interests of every description, ought to 
give way, if there was need of it, to the accomplishment of their 
designs. In the progress of time and events, and the ruin of 
political parties, this fundamental idea — which is the essence of 
lawlessness and anarchy — attaches itself in the public mind of 
some of the Northern States, to that particular aspect of the ques- 
tion of the Black Race which relates to the obligation, under the 
Federal Constitution, of delivering fugitive slaves ; and laws of 
various kinds are passed, throwing the weight of State authority 
against the obligation of the very highest national law. And so the 
idea and process of disintegration, as the tendency to lawlessness 
and anarchy strengthens, has thus risen from the condition of a 
fanaticism, to the dignity cf a principle recognized by States 
and asserted in laws. As if to warn men of the breadth of the 
ruin involved in this tendency, and to mark the extremity of the 
peril arising from its connection with the question of the Black 
Race, one of the slave States had already, under a similar, but 
directly opposite tendency, formally asserted its right, not only 
to obstruct the execution of the laws of the United States, but 
to nullify them absolutely, and upon its own sole and sovereign 
discretion ; so that the spirit of lawlessness and anarchy, in its 



OUR COUNTRY- '^ 



1861.] 

absolute and universal tendency to disintegrate all things — moved, 
though not first, yet more rapidly and by more decisive acts, at 
the South than at the North. 

4. Once more in the progress of time and events, and the ruin 
of political parties — the whole nation finds itself arrayed, in the 
last Presidential election, into two opposite parties, (of which the 
defeated one is mad enough to sub-divide itself into three ) ; and 
this same question of the Black Race, both in the aspect of the 
rendition of fugitive slaves, and in the aspect of slavery m the 
Territories — and these same questions of supreme law and of law- 
lessness as connected therewith — mounting to the highest national 
importance, and apparently swallowing up all other questions, are 
resolved, so far as that election could resolve them. But the solu- 
tion is every way remarkable. For while Mr. Lincoln is elected 
President —the majority of the nation is so decidedly against him, 
that he would have been beaten if the power of Congress to create 
uniform electoral districts had ever been exercised; nay, would 
have been beaten under the existing system, if all opposed to him 
had been allowed by the corruption or folly of parties to unite on 
one opponent. Moreover the solution is further remarkable, in 
this, that both Houses of Congress, and, as is alleged, the Supreme 
Court of the United States, held his most dangerous opinions to 
be unconstitutional: and it is still further remarkable in this, that 
Mr. Lincoln himself, while representing the Northern section of 
the anarchical tendency of the times, is known to repudiate the 
original principle of that faction concerning the rendition of 
fugitive slaves, — and is by universal consent, even of his candid 
opponents, an able, honest, and patriotic man. At the end of 
thirty years of working of the spirit we have been tracing, a 
decisive event had thus put the country in a posture whore it 
would clearly appear whether the hereditary law-abiding spirit of 
our race remained, the great prop and safeguard of all our insti- 
tutions ; or whether the spirit of anarchy, already so signally 
manifested at both extremities of the nation, had so far poisoned 
the national life of our race at its fountain, that the time had 
come for one of those great explosions of human passion which 
fill so many melancholy pages in the history of our race. 

5. It is not easy to conjecture, and it is impossible to say with 



76 OUR COUNTRY. [March, 

certainty, what would have occurred if the late presidential elec- 
tion had terminated differently from what it did, — in any one of 
the various ways in which a different termination was possible. 
This far we may now speak with certainty, that in some form or 
other, the spirit of turbulent fanaticism which had pervaded the 
States of the extreme North so long and so deeply, would not 
without a miracle, such as history does not record, have been al- 
layed or composed under any defeat that was possible, in the 
state of national parties as they are now known to have existed 
at that time. For there was this fatal element, long concealed — 
not generally believed — but openly avowed since the secession 
of South Carolina — that secession, as the final and deliberate 
choice of the extreme South, was the point to which political 
opinion had been long and carefully trained, and political parties 
long and singly directed. This fatal training, added to the widely 
diffused spirit of anarchy, smarting under a defeat equally signal 
and unnecessary, and stimulated by considerations of the very 
highest importance connected with the question of the Black Race 
in every aspect of that question — produced the apparently sud- 
den revolution which has already, when these pages are written, 
led the six cotton States (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, 
Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana) to pass separate acts of seces- 
sion from the United States of America. Here then is the con- 
summation of this spirit of lawlessness and anarchy, working as 
we have already said it universally works, unto the disintegration 
— the morcelment of all things ; — the consummation of it, so far 
as to embrace all the States producing cotton, sugar, and rice, as 
their great staples. What is next to be determined is, the fate 
of the mixed slave States — those divided between farmino; and 
planting, ( North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas ) : and 
then the fate of the border slave States, (Delaware, Maryland, 
Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri ) : and then, we may confidently 
add, the fate of the nation. Whatever, in the meantime, it is of 
the last importance to bear in mind, shall be the conduct of the 
whole of the free States, and especially of the border free States 
(New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa), 
may be decisive alike of their own fate, and of that of all the 
rest, and of the nation itself for many generations. 



1861.] OUR COUNTRY. 77 

6. Is it possible for any thoughtful person to suppose, that this 
spirit of reckless disregard of all existing institutions, has already 
accomplished all the results of which it is capable ? What shall 
prevent it from swallowing up all the remaining slave States ? 
What shall, after that is accomplished, prevent a counter-revolu- 
tion in every one of those slave States ? What shall prevent its 
taking some new direction with still more vehement force, through- 
out the whole North ? What shall prevent a counter-revolution 
in every Northern State ? And who can venture to hope, that a 
spirit which everywhere tramples under foot those institutions 
which everywhere have been esteemed most sacred, and every- 
where despises the most venerable and the most cherished tradi- 
tions of our country and our race ; will finally slake its thirst in 
any thing but human blood, or fail to assuage its insatiable rapa- 
city hj universal plunder? Cannot even the blind see, that 
when laws are violated in the name of morality and order, and 
constitutions are set at nought in the name of liberty and securi- 
ty, and revolutions are accomplished by terror and conducted 
under the guidance of irresistible fanaticism ; that there can be 
no result to such a career, as long as it has way, but the destruc- 
tion of everything that human governments are instituted to 
protect ; and that at every step of the career, the overthrow of 
every salutary power and the disintegration of every healthful 
force of society, more and more confirms the existence and the 
reign of universal anarchy ? It is as if God should destroy every 
principle of cohesion in the physical universe, and leave every 
separate force in it working to the destruction of all things. It 
is as if he should destroy every idea of subjection in the moral 
universe, and leave the passions of men to work out all the horrors 
of an infinite disorder. It is as the steady working of omnipo- 
tent force, unto the production of universal helplessness. It is, 
when it shall pervade the earth, the realization of the conjectures 
of those who expound the divine predictions concerning the con- 
dition in which The Son of Man will find all nations at his second 
coming — the universal reign of lawlessness after the universal dis- 
integration of every element capable of restraining it. What we 
say is — not that these results are inevitable : God forbid ! But we 
do say they are natural — they are imminent — they are far more 



78 OUR COUNTRY. [March, 

to be apprehended, than what has ah'eady occurred, both in the 
North and in the South, was to be apprehended thirty years ago. 
And we may say these things with a greater confidence of an in- 
sight of the terrible future, and a more eager beseeching of our 
generation to beware ; since during more than thirty years we 
have not ceased to lift up an unheeded testimony, both against 
the principles and the proceedings, both at the North and at the 
South — whose frightful results the country is now beginning to 
realize. 

II. 1. Let us now seek, amidst this chaos, for some ground of 
hope and effort. Throughout the eighteen free States, society is 
supposed to be under the control of the Republican party. As 
indicated by the presidential election in November last, it may be 
conceded that the majority in all those States, did at that time, 
believe the election of ]Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency, to be the 
best of the alternatives then offered to their choice ; and it may 
be further conceded, thougli it is not strictly accurate, that, at 
present, the local political and military power, in all those States, 
is in the hands of the Republican party. But it is also true that 
a minority in those States, numerically almost as large as the 
entire voting population of the fifteen slave States, voted against 
Mr. Lincoln — and are thorougldy opposed to the distinctive 
principles of the Republican party. It is also undeniable that a 
very large number of those who voted for Mr. Lincoln, are far 
more Whigs or Americans than they are Republicans : — and it 
is equally certain that a very large number of the Republican 
party itself, strictly speaking, are patriotic men, who, while they 
preferred the success of their party to the success of any other 
party, prefer the peace, the prosperity, and the security of their 
country above anything that could be obtained by the triumph of 
their party. If any political result in the future, therefore, can 
be considered certain, it is certain, that a revolution in opinion, 
more or less decided, will manifest itself throughout the free 
States, whenever the issue is clearly put to them between their 
country and any political party. And it is equally certain, that 
whatever party shall hurry those States, by whatever means, into 
the horrors of civil war, and the anguish of that impending anar- 
chy of which we have spoken ; will perish by a counter-revolu- 



1861.] OUR COUNTRY. 79 

tion, just as apt to be bloody there as in any otlier portion of the 
nation. 

2. In the position of all the slave States there are peculiar cir- 
cumstances much overlooked, both amongst themselves and others ; 
but nevertheless decisive in the long run. No force, however 
small, but will accomplish its end, if sufficient time be allowed: 
even that which is infinitely minute, if it operates through an 
infinite period. The six cotton States appear to us to have taken 
their course in such a temper, with such purposes, upon such 
principles, and under such foregone conclusions, that they neither 
desire to return to their former position, nor would at present 
agree to anything that they believe would accomplish that result. 
It is, of course, possible that we are mistaken in this painful con- 
clusion, and we should heartily rejoice to know that we are : but, 
seeing no ground on which we can doubt that the case stands thus, 
neither do we see anv on which we can avoid stating our belief. 
It would be gross injustice to many thousands of patriotic men in 
all the cotton States, to suppose that either of those States would 
have been allowed to take the course it has pursued, without a 
desperate political struggle in its own bosom ; if the circumstances 
of these men, in each of those States, had appeared to them to 
allow of resistance to the organized force which swept society 
away. There are also thousands of persons in all those States, 
who even now consider it a slander and a reproach, that ulterior 
designs are ascribed to those who direct this secession movement, 
which it seems apparent to all mankind, except themselves, are 
not only certain to be realized if the movement is permanently 
sustained, but which were amongst the earliest and most powerful 
causes of the long cherished desire to be relieved from the real 
restraints of the Federal Government, and the imaginary perils 
and injuries of the Federal Union. In the actual condition of the 
States which have already seceded, as we understand that condi- 
tion and the manner in which it has been brought about, we 
deem it perfectly obvious that a counter-revolution must manifest 
itself in every one of them — equally as decided, and perhaps 
more violent, than the revolution which has already occurred. 
That counter-revolution may be in a direction more and more 
fatal — bringing into uncontrolled power, parties wholly unfit and 



80 OUK COUXTRY. [MoTch, 

unworthy to possess it. It may be in a direction eminently favor- 
able to the security and prosperity of those cotton States, and 
terminating in their restoration to the Union, under the lead of a 
party whose elements now lie scattered, or even as yet totally un- 
developed. But the present revolution, in its very nature, its 
causes, and its designs — must go deeper, in one direction or the 
other. In icliich direction, depends in our opinion, in the first 
instance, in a great degree, upon these contingencies : 1. The 
conduct of the present ruling faction in those States ; its forbear- 
ance on the one hand, or its violence on the other : 2. The con- 
duct of the Federal Government towards those States ; as it may 
be firm and yet temperate, or as it may be vacillating and timid : 
3. The conduct of the slave States continuing in the Union ; as 
thev may share the madness of the six seceding States, or as they 
may arrest the pestilence at the cotton line, and by their wisdom 
and courage restore the Union : 4. The conduct of the free States, 
and especially those along the slave border ; as they shall obsti- 
nately persist in fomenting opinions and performing acts touch- 
ing the whole question of the Black Race, which they can now 
clearly see must involve the country in one common ruin, or as 
they, by a common consent, or by a counter-revolution in their own 
bosom, restore public opinion to a condition under which slave 
States may safely live in peace with them. Under such circum- 
stances it is easy to see, how great and difiBcult is the task laid 
on true statesmen, everywhere, and hov>- immense and how dubious 
are the issues submitted to them. 

3. The remaining nine slave States, of which five are border 
States, and four are mixed slave States, have in each of these 
classes peculiarities as marked as those which distinguish the 
cotton States ; yet as the whole nine occupy a similar position at 
the present moment, with regard to the revolution which has swept 
over the cotton States ; they may, for the sake of brevity, be 
thrown together in developing the great ideas we are endeavoring 
to disclose. What the exact issue will be in these nine States — 
or whether it will be similar in them all — or in which direction 
the prevailing opinion will settle, if different courses are taken — 
are questions which it is impossible to determine at this time. 
But it is very obvious, that if the whole nine — or even the greater 



1861.] OUR COUNTRY. ^1 

part of them, embracing the leading and powerfal States, refuse 
to unite in the movement taken by the six cotton States, that; 
movement must necessarily prove a failure, both as to its avovred, 
and as to any concealed object ; a counter-revolution in the cotton 
States becomes presently inevitable; and those cotton States 
must ultimately accommodate themselves to the policy, vrhatever 
it may be, adopted by the other and leading States, instead of 
being able to force those far more powerful than themselves, to 
follow blindly and servilely a course disapproved by them, and 
which rests for its ultimate reason, upon nothing better than the 
sudden caprice of South Carolina, or her chronic hatred of the 
National Union. There are immense considerations, altogether 
independent of the real merits of the great cause which is under 
trial — why the course dictated by South Carolina, and adopted by 
the other cotton States, should be steadfastly rejected. Amongst 
these are such as follow : 1. This method by secession annihi- 
lates the very idea of all force in permanent constitutional union, 
or common government over sovereign States, and establishes as 
inherent in all possible future unions, the idea of anarchy, and 
deprives liberty forever of the possibility of being either stable 
or strong : 2. The method of secession, by separate State action, 
is founded on illusions utterly fatal and absurd, that the American 
people are not a nation —the Federal Constitution not a govern- 
nient — the American people not bound to be loyal except to local 
authorities, which being assumed, condemns this continent to be 
the everlasting habitation of every thing feeble, factious, and ex- 
travagant : 3. The adoption of ordinances of secession, by con- 
ventions called by ordinary Legislatures — without allowing the 
people to determine by a previous sovereign act whether or not 
the convention shall exist, and by a subsequent sovereign act 
whether or not its proceedings shall have force — destroys the 
very idea of the sovereignty of the people, makes constitutional 
liberty and security impossible, and invites factions, in proportion 
as they are corrupt or incompetent, to usurp and to abuse sove- 
reign power : -i. The utter refusal to consult with States, all of 
which were united by the highest human obligations — and many 
of which were involved in perils the very same in kind and higher 
in degree — is a line of conduct reckless in itself, insulting to all 
VOL. I. — NO. 1. 6 



82 OUR COUNTRY. [March, 

others, apparently adopted with the purpose of rendering all 
peaceful, considerate, or even decorous arrangements impossible, 
and necessarily jeopards, in the result reached, the profitable 
continuance of slavery, if not its very existence, in the greater 
part of the slave States, and amongst them the most powerful, 
the most loyal, and the most enlightened of them all. At the 
present moment two most important truths are perfectly distinct. 
The first is, that the action hitherto taken in the States whose 
position we are now considering, — no matter what that action 
may lead to — involves a fundamental dissent from the conduct 
pursued by the six seceding States — and contemplates redress 
in a diiferent way, and upon opposite principles. The second is, 
that a very great portion of each of these nine States, probably 
the majority of the people in most of them — possibly in all of 
them, — are warmly attached to the Union, — are resolutely de- 
termined to maintain their loyalty to the nation as their nation, 
at the same time that they maintain their loyalty to the particular 
States of which they are citizens, and are far more inclined to 
compose existing difficulties, than to drive matters to extremity 
in any direction, 

4. These facts and considerations, taken in detail and taken 
all together, are worthy of the very highest consideration ; — and 
whatever the issue of events may be, they reveal- to the people 
and to those they trust, the grounds on which, and the manner in 
which, the country may be saved : and they disclose to posterity 
the pregnant and enduring truth, that at the utmost peril of the 
country the ijeople would have saved it, if they had been bravely 
and wisely led. For under fair and true statesmanship, the 
chances are more than equal, in the first place, to rally the im- 
mense masses of the nine slave States whose people are now pon- 
dering their course, to such an action as will make their position 
secure in the Union, and satisfy them : in the second place, to 
secure such a treatment of the subject of secession by the Federal 
Administration, as will at once give efficacy to the laws, and avoid 
armed collision, except in repelling force by force : in the third 
place, to seek and to rely upon, such a reaction among the masses 
of the people in the free States, as will, by a common consent, or 
if it becomes necessary, by hurling from power those who stand 



1861.] OUR COUNTRY. 83 

in the way, make manifest the determination of those masses to 
put an end to the reign of that atheistical and relentless fanati- 
cism, which is the original cause of the ruin that stares us all in 
the face : and in the fourth place, to expect and await with con- 
fidence, the inevitable counter-revolution in the States which have 
already seceded, which will disabuse the minds of men of the de- 
lusion that the revolution there has been, as to the popular masses, 
either spontaneous or cordial, and restore those States to their 
true position in the confederacy. It is in this manner that re- 
sults, equally indispensable and glorious, are attainable, — results 
capable also, no doubt, of being defeated ; and that in ways far 
too various to be traced here. But when defeated, let us never 
forget that they who defeat them will share in full measure with 
us, all present evils, and will bear alone the execrations of poster- 
ity. And when defeated, what will remain for this generation, 
will be to realize the calamities of that frightful condition we have 
traced in the commencement of this paper ; — or, as Ave have at- 
tempted to show on a former occasion, to construct even upon the 
line between the free and the slave States, a new and central 
power — competent at once to preserve all our institutions, to 
develope our national progress, and to direct the destinies of this 
continent. 

5. Besides the special considerations which we have developed, 
as particularly relevant to the condition of our country, and the 
manner in which her destiny may be retrieved : there are many 
other considerations of a more general kind, and of the highest 
force, all pointing in the same direction, which it behooves 
every man to ponder deeply, before he despairs of his country, 
and before he lays his hands rudely on our existing institutions, 
in the vain hope of something better. Of these, there are two 
so preeminent, that we ought to direct special attention to them. 
The first relates to that view of the subject which discloses the 
indestructible power of life in such a nation as this, and the 
length and depth and breadth of the agony which it can endure, 
and yet live. They who know the past of human affairs, and 
they who reflect on that eternal logic which is of the essence of 
things and events, know that a nation like this cannot die. It is 
hardly possible to conceive how it can even he murdered; but die 



84 OUR COUNTRY. [March, 

it cannot. It would be as easy to conceive that France could be 
blotted from the map of Europe as one of its greatest nations, 
and restored to the condition it occupied before its conquest by- 
Caesar ; as to conceive of the American nation being annihilated, 
its sublime career cut short, its boundless possessions parcelled 
out, and an ignominious retinue of numberless aristocracies, dem- 
ocracies, dukedoms, and principalities, permanently filling its seat 
of empire and of glory. After eighteen centuries of anguish, 
Italy, hailed by the acclamations of mankind, is purging herself 
in a baptism of blood from the very condition which men are pre- 
paring for us ; and the consuming instinct of her restored life is 
for that very national unity which we are expected to sacrifice, 
and in default of which she has suffered every form of evil, in 
every stage of civilization, under every kind of government. 
What have they to offer us, in exchange for our national unity, 
but sorrow without an object — and degradation without a limit 
— accompanied with struggles and suffering for its recovery, 
renewed, and suppressed in blood, and renewed for evermore — 
until in some distant age, perhaps, it shall be restored amidst the 
rejoicings of all peoples ! This blind and fierce spirit of anarchy 
which has fastened upon the extremities of the nation, and is 
threatening to eat into its heart, has no aspect more startling, 
than its frightful antagonism to the absolute tendency and the 
total civilization of the age, in which it has made itself manifest. 
The second of the two great considerations alluded to, relates to 
the dominion and purpose of God over and concerning our coun- 
try. The revolting disregard which this whole movement towards 
destruction exhibits towards God's dealings with our country, the 
shocking conceptions it proclaims of our mission as a people, 
compared with the conception of that mission as indicated by God 
himself, present almost the saddest aspect of the case. Nor is it 
the least remarkable feature of the lawless spirit which underlies 
the entire revolution, that while in both extremities of the nation 
it fastens upon the same idea — the slavery of the African race 
— as the controlling idea of God in all his purposes concerning 
us ; it should give that idea its utmost destructiveness to us, and 
its utmost offensiveness to God, by making it work in directions 
precisely opposite. Is it conceivable that God should teach his 



1861.] OUR COUNTRY. 86 

children at the North, that his highest purpose concerning the 
American people is, that they should extinguish African slavery ; 
and at the same moment teach his children at the South, that his 
highest purpose concerning the American people is, that they 
should perpetuate African slavery ? Rather is it not utterly in- 
conceivable, that he should have taught any of them that his pur- 
poses concerning African slavery, or the African race, in any way 
whatever contain his chief purposes concerning the white race on 
this continent ? A more melancholy instance can scarcely be- 
produced in all history, of the destructive extent to which re- 
ligious opinion can be made to take the prevailing hue of a fierce 
enthusiasm, or an intolerant fanaticism, which reigns around it. 
It is not in this manner, on the one side or the other, that the 
tens of thousands of God's children, scattered over this great 
empire like salt Avhich has not lost its savour, interpret the teach- 
ings of his word, the indications of his providence, or the tokens 
of his infinite mercy towards us. It is not in any such sense of 
the mission of our country, or our race, that the people every- 
where, have so lately come before God, in a great service of 
national humiliation, confessing their sins, and praying for his 
gracious interposition in this time of sore need. Who is authorized 
to say, that God has not heard the cry of his people ? Who will 
dare to say, that God is not able to save ? In the utmost extrem- 
ity of Israel, God said to them by Moses, Fear ye not, stand still, 
and see the salvation of God, which he will shew to you to-day. 

III. 1. At present, and during a long course of preceding 
years, it has been the very general impression that Negro slavery 
was the direct, if not the single difficulty, in all the commotions 
of which we have been speaking. As far as these commotions 
have had a moral and religious element, and have manifested 
themselves in the bosom of the diflferent Christian denominations, 
this wide-spread impression has probably been true. But in other 
respects the connection of Negro slavery with these commotions, 
throughout, has been indirect ; and its moral and religious aspect 
has had little significance, except as the abolition movement has 
heen free-thinking in religion, and as political and sectional parties 
have coerced religious opinion in particular directions, for party 
and sectional purposes. The nullification movement many years 



86 OUR COUNTRY. [March, 

ago, in South Carolina, related to slavery only in the most indi- 
rect way — and in no connection with any moral or religious 
question. It was a question of revenue, taxation, commerce, 
tariffs, wealth : a false theory of political economy enraged by the 
peculiar condition of labor. More recently, the commotion about 
slavery in the Territories, has been a struggle for political power, 
aggravated on the side of the North by the urgency of its nu- 
merous emigrant population for cheap homes in fertile regions. 
And at the present moment, the States which have seceded, are 
of all the slave States the very ones which would not have 
seceded, and the slave States which are most anxious to preserve 
the Union are the very ones Avhich would have promptly seceded, 
if the current impression of the case was true and complete. If 
at any time within the last thirty years, a revolution in produc- 
tion, in trade, in commerce, in any thing, had wrought a thorough 
change in the general opinion of the South, touching — not the 
essential nature — but the incidental advantages of slavery in a 
political and a financial point of view ; of course, no one would 
ever have heard of secession in the South — or even seen the 
remotest approach to the existing state of opinion at the North. 
It is the idea of power — power to be diminished by remaining 
in the Union and to be incalculably augmented by leaving it; 
the idea of wealth, of conquest, of advancement — all of tliem, 
we are thoroughly convinced, in the highest degree illusive and 
fatal ; but it is these ideas — far more than any disgust that the 
North condemns slavery as immoral, or any apprehension that 
slavery will be disturbed, or slaves stolen, or the South annoyed 
in the Union — that pervades the present dominant party in the 
cotton States, and enabled it to precipitate them into revolution. 
How far this aspect of the case aggravates or alleviates the diffi- 
culty of dealing with it, in any hope of such an issue as we con- 
sider fortunate, must depend on many considerations which can 
not be discussed here. In any event, it seems clear that they 
who wovild heal a malady must understand its exact nature. And 
if it is never healed, they who eagerly desire that it should be, 
owe to themselves and to posterity a fair and complete statement 
of the case, and of the remedy they propose for it. 

2. Human servitude, considered in its widest sense, and of 



1861.] OUR COUNTRY. 87 

wMcli hereditary slavery as it exists in our slave States is the 
extreme form — may be discussed in the light of Divine Revela- 
tion — or in the light of the Law of Nature — or in the light of 
the political and municipal institutions of the countries where it 
exists. Considered in this last aspect — there ought to he no 
dispute concerning it, and there can be none fairly, in this coun- 
try, except in a single point of view — namely, its existence in 
the national territory, which we vrill speak of separately. For, 
undeniably, each State has the complete and exclusive right, to 
determine concerning it as a strictly domestic institution ; and, 
undeniably, neither any other State, nor the government which is 
common to all the States, has any power to interfere with it, or 
concerning it, in any State. And this is not only matter of con- 
stitutional obligation on one side, and uncontrolled right on the 
other ; but the plainest dictates of prudence, and the clearest obli- 
gations of morality, impose upon the States, and the general 
government, the duty of a simple, sincere, and faithful observance 
of all that is implied, as well as all that is expressed, in these re- 
strictions. Massachusetts has no right, of any kind, to assail 
slavery in South Carolina, — nor has South Carolina any right of 
any sort to encourage the introduction of slavery into Massachu- 
setts : and any attempt on the part of the General Government, 
directly or indirectly, to favour any such endeavour on the part 
of either of them, is a foolish and wicked perversion of its own 
nature. Nor is there any plea that can be offered, either by the 
General Government, or by any State, for departing from this 
clear line of mutual duty, which is not immoral in itself, and 
revolutionary in its tendency. Moreover the prompt and cordial 
performance by all parties, towards each other, of all the mutual 
duties binding upon them under the Federal Constitution touching 
every subject, and amongst the rest the subject of slavery, and 
amongst the duties connected with slavery the rendition of fugi- 
tive slaves, of v.hich we will speak separately ; besides being 
every way binding before God and man, is the sure, the wise, and- 
the peaceful way to promote all the interests of all the parties, 
and to secure the lasting glory and prosperity of the country. 

3. AAHien we undertake to determine this, or indeed any ques- 
tion, under what we call the Law of Nature, we encounter the 



88 ouE COUNTRY. [March, 

most serious difficulties at every step. What we shall say, there- 
fore, on this topic, must be in subordination to what has just been 
said under the aspect of our civil and political obligations, and 
what we shall say presently under the aspect of revealed truth and 
duty. Besides the statement of the Law of Nature, recorded and 
reiterated in the Word of God, of which we do not speak at 
present, there are other — perhaps numerous, but certainly indis- 
tinct, and perhaps contradictory utterances of that great and per- 
manent law. At the head of these utterances we may place that 
which the human reason discloses : next to that, perhaps, the 
common impulses of the human soul : then, perhaps, the current 
opinions and beliefs of the human race : and then, which in some 
respects ought to be held most valid of all — the common and 
apparently inevitable, if not voluntary state of our race in all 
ages — as the best concrete expression of its reason, its impulses, 
and its current belief — and therefore of the Law of its Nature 
in its present state. If we will reflect carefully on each of these 
utterances of the Law of Nature touching this vast topic of human 
servitude, we will perceive how narrow is the foothold they afford 
to support us in disloyalty towards the civil and political institu- 
tions of our country, much less to sustain us in rejecting the re- 
vealed will of God. (1.) The human reason teaches with clear- 
ness, that if there can be such a thing, or such an idea, as property, 
the highest form of it — nay, the very basis of it — is the right 
which every one has to himself: and just as clearly, that the 
claim of property by the Law of Nature, on the part of one per- 
son in another person, is founded in the rejection of the very 
foundation of the idea of property, since my right to have another 
rests on my previous right to myself. On the other hand, human 
reason teaches us that property in ourself is as capable of being 
forfeited, limited, or alienated, as any other property. For ex- 
ample, the right of existence is higher than our property in our- 
self ; audit is as absurd to say that I may not part absolutely with 
the latter, in order to secure the former, as it is to say I may not 
limit my property in myself, in order to make my existence more 
endurable, or even more comfortable. And the very nature of 
human society is such, that the liberty, as well as the life and 
property of every one, passes by the fact of the existence of 



1861.] OUR COUNTRY. B§ 

society, from its absolute personal form, into a modified form de- 
terminable only by the aggregate will — which will ougJit to be 
determined by the will of God. But as the human race is in 
rebellion against God — human reason lands the problem very 
nearly in a paradox. (2.) If we appeal next for guidance to the 
common wipvlses of the human soul, in order to have this great 
question of human servitude interpreted, we obtain a response 
equally vague, but far more vehement than before. Surely it is, 
and it has always been, the desire of every human being to be 
free from restraint — the passionate desire of our race to possess 
what each member of it, in his particular condition, meant by 
liberty. And the aggregate impulse of the race in that direction, 
is more powerful and is better regulated to-day than it ever was 
before, — and the hope of true, and stable, and universal freedom, 
as the final inheritance of all mankind, may be more rationally 
cherished, than at any former period. But the wisest men and the 
freest people know the best — that this personal desire of freedom 
from restraint is no evidence whatever that restraint is wrong ; 
and that this universal impulse towards what they mean by liberty, 
totally fails — of itself — in proving that they who cherish it 
would do aught but mischief, if God were to gratify all their de- 
sires. It is one of the most sorrowful aspects of human nature 

— this consuming impulse towards liberty and equality — this 
lasting desire of the good and the wise that it might be gratified 

— this total impossibility of its gratification, except under special 
conditions of advancement, reached as yet by comparatively small 
portions of our race. (3.) And now if we turn to the common 
opinion and helicfof the human race, as the true expositor of that 
law of their nature under the light of which the institutions of the 
most civilized states are to be abolished and the inspired teach- 
ings of God are to be silenced ; we may take one firm step, and 
then all is chaos, which thickens as we advance. Assuredly there 
is a sense of good and of true — and therefore of right and just 

— universal in our race ; and a sense, moreover, that these things 
apply to, and ought to regulate, all the conditions and relations 
of man — servitude in all its forms amongst the rest. If there 
was ever an opinion and belief common to our race, that servitude 
in its widest sense was contrary to the nature of man j then the" 



90 OUR COUNTRY. [March, 

race had before it always, in the actual condition of the larger 
part of it, the clearest proof that the belief was absurd. If there 
had ever been such a common belief strong enough to form the 
basis of practical life ; then half the race would have immediately 
perished from want — or universal rapine would have become its 
habitual condition. The belief has, no doubt, been common to 
our race in all time, that every one ought to enjoy all the gifts 
of God, and amongst the rest the inestimable one of personal 
freedom, so far as was compatible with the circumstances in 
which God's providence had placed each person — that is, so far 
as was compatible with the will of the Giver of all good, thus 
made known to every person. And this belief is true and just. 
But what is established by it is, that according to the Law of 
Nature as explained by the spontaneous belief of mankind, servi- 
tude in every form may, though of itself indifferent, become 
right or wrong, good or bad, according to the circumstances of 
each particular case. And beyond this unquestionable truth — 
he who will enquire will get no intelligible response. (4.) The 
last of the four utterances of the Law of Nature which we have 
specified, is the actual execution of the law, as that is exhibited to 
us in the common state of the human race, in all ages, and in 
every stage of civilization. Here there is no possibility of mis- 
take. The testimony is as unanimous, as it is frightful and uni- 
versal. The different races, the different nations, the different 
tribes, the different families, the different individuals — all, every 
where, have felt themselves to be naturally impelled to reduce 
each other into a condition of subjection — and have felt them- 
selves to be naturally permitted, upon a change of fortune, to 
submit to a state of subjection. Nor is it possible to doubt that 
the natural and universal conduct of mankind, as clearly proves that 
men are as thoroughly convinced they ought to be masters, as 
their conduct could possibly prove they Avere convinced that they 
ought not to be slaves. Those conditions of mankind which are 
alledo-ed to resemble most nearly the condition claimed to be nat- 
ural to man, are the very conditions in which servitude, in some 
form or other, is the most spontaneous and complete ; and it is in 
conditions of advanced civilization that the extreme forms of ser- 
vitude gradually expire — unless some peculiar element in the 



1861.] OUR COUNTRY. 91 

state of society opposes an insuperable barrier to its extinction. 
It takes nothing from this boundless testimony, to assert that the 
dreary conclusion it establishes is contrary to the reason, the im- 
pulses, and the beliefs of mankind : for if the assertion were true, 
it only shoAvs that mankind cannot be, what mankind asserts, de- 
sires, and believes it should be. And the more desolate the con- 
viction thus begotten may be, the more are we compelled to look 
— for the mitigation of human servitude — not to revolution 
based on our notions of the Law of Nature, but to the wise and 
temperate amelioration of existing institutions, under the in- 
fluence of the love of God. And the more all other rules of 
judgment and conduct fail us, the more ought we to feel obliged 
to submit ourselves to the guidance of God, in matters which con- 
cern us so nearly as these now do. What remains, therefore, is 
to consider the question of human servitude in the light of divine 
revelation, 

4. It is in the Word of God that this great problem is com- 
pletely solved. Human servitude, in all its forms, is one of the 
badges of the fallen condition of the human race ; and every in- 
cident of it, that aggravates any particular form of it, or that 
augments the severity of all the forms of it from the very lightest 
to the very heaviest, is a separate proof that our natural condi- 
tion is one of sin and misery. And whatever revolt there may 
be in human nature against any form of servitude, is a kind of 
testimony to the original freedom in which man was created in 
the image of God, and to the remaining susceptibility of his de- 
praved nature to be restored ; Avhile the utter inability of the race 
to escape this part of its deplorable condition, shows how deeply 
the grounds and reasons of that condition are laid in its nature. 
A fallen race, lying under the wrath of God and the condemna- 
tion of his holy law — but having his promise of deliverance even 
in this life and of immortal blessedness in a better life to come — 
is making its way, in this condition of probation, through the ages 
and across the earth. The accumulated experience of the entire 
existence of the race, and the uniform course of divine provi- 
dence, and the explicit declarations of God's AVord, show us in. 
the clearest manner, that the career of such a race, in such a 
state, and yet under such a probation, must necessarily exhibit 



92 OUR COUNTRY. [March, 

much that is, so to speak, unavoidably incident to such a case, in 
some respects alleviating, and in some respects aggravating its or- 
dinary, average condition. War is inevitable ; sometimes in its re- 
sult glorious and blessed, sometimes frightful in all its issues ; but 
war, so far from being of itself, and to all who engage in it either 
just or sinful, is often atrocious, and often amongst the highest du- 
ties of mankind. Sickness is the product of God's just sentence of 
death upon our sinful race, and is of itself a temporal evil cover- 
ing the whole earth ; yet it is often made an unspeakable blessing, 
and no one ventures to say is of itself sinful. Sorrow and afflic- 
tion are brought on us in innumerable forms, and from every quar- 
ter, and often by means of our truest, and noblest, and wisest im- 
pulses ; — in every instance they are incidents of sin, direct or 
remote, but perhaps not in one instance of a million of the sin of 
him who suffers. Poverty, and its consequent, suffering, is of it- 
self one of the direst and most universal calamities of mankind ; 
and yet it is the parent of many of our highest virtues and at- 
tainments — and so far from being sinful of itself, is the subject 
of many of the most tender and urgent provisions both of the law 
of God and the Gospel of Christ. It is to this great class of inci- 
dents of the actual condition of our race, that human servitude in 
all its forms belongs. Existing, like all we have named, and mul- 
titudes besides, because our condition is just what it is — a con- 
dition of sin and misery in a state of probation ; wrought out 
inevitably, in some form or other, in the bosom of such a condi- 
tion; modified indefinitely, by every circumstance that affects 
any considerable portion of the race; but utterly incapable of 
being permanently and universally abolished, while our race con- 
tinues in a state of sin and misery, attended with probation. It 
seems to us as absurd to call the relation of master and servant 
(in any form of servitude) sinful of itself, or to expect the relation 
to cease upon earth ; as it is to call the relation between a sick 
man and a well one, an afflicted man and a happy man, a rich 
man and a poor one, sinful of itself, or expect either of them to 
come to an end. And this, it seems to us, is the simple, the ra- 
tional, and the scriptural account of human servitude in all its 
possible aspects, and in its essential nature in the sight of God. 
5. If we acknowledge the sacred Scriptures to be the divine 



1861.] OUR COUNTRY. 93 

rule of our faith and our practice, there ought to be an end to all 
extreme opinions, and all violent proceedings, on this entire sub- 
ject. From the days of Abraham, to the death of the last in- 
spired Apostle, there is one uniform doctrine, one uniform prac- 
tice, one unchanging aspect of the whole matter — presented by 
God for the guidance of mankind. Throughout the total revela- 
tion which God has made to man — throughout the immense period 
embracing the dispensations of Abraham, of Moses, and of Christ, 
— human servitude, Abrahamic, Jewish, Christian, and heathen — 
and the heathen aspect of it, such as was presented in every nation 
of antiquity, Asiatic, African and European, down to and after the 
period of universal dominion by the Romans ; we have this im- 
mense subject exhibited to us, in all its possible bearings, by God 
himself. Never, in a single instance, is it represented to us as a 
thing good in itself: never, in a single instance, as a thing sinful 
in itself: always as a thing actually existing, always to be ex- 
pected, allowed by God, considered and treated in his law, regu- 
lated by his providence, wholly indifferent as concerning his grace, 
and to enter into our final account to him, both as we maybe mas- 
ters and as we may be servants, in the light of our faithful dis- 
charge or our wicked neglect of our duties to each other in that 
relation. As masters, the measure of our authority is the mea- 
sure of our guilt, if we neglect the duties binding on us, or abuse 
the power we possess : so that the slavery which exists amongst 
us, carries this responsibility to a height which, to all thoughtful 
Christian persons, gives the institution one of its heaviest burdens. 
To consider the relation, on the side of the master, one merely 
of profit to himself, is to forfeit at once every justification for its 
continuance ; while, on the other hand, to rob the relation wholly 
of that aspect, can be founded only on the notion that all servitude 
is sinful, or else on some fanatical idea of justice or charity, 
which if rendered practical would put an end to society, by put- 
ting an end to all motive for any one to obtain any sort of service 
from another. That every form of servitude ought to be ameli- 
orated continually, even if we are sure it can never be abolished, 
is as clear as that poverty should be alleviated though we know it 
can never be prevented, or that sickness should be relieved, 
though it is certain it will recur forever. Clear as may be the 



94 OUR COUNTRY. [March, 

justification of every form of servitude so far as the mere question 
of sin is concerned — and perfect as may be the right to persist 
in the extreme form of it, so far as the civil power is concerned — 
there are a thousand considerations, personal and public, moral 
and political, ^yhich may so bear upon individuals and communi- 
ties, as to make it their clear duty, under given circumstances, to 
put an end to the hereditary slavery which exists amongst us, or 
under given circumstances, to make it improper to attempt it, or 
impossible to accomplish it. It is absurd, therefore, if not mon- 
strous, to contend that vast regions of our country are morally 
bound to the last extremity and as their chief duty, to labour for the 
more secure establishment and the more effectual perpetuation of 
negro slavery ; and equally so to array public opinion, and to di- 
rect political parties, in other vast portions of the country, to the 
repression or the destruction of it, on any pretext at all, much 
less any connected with its moral nature. We have already shown 
that a faithful observance of our constitutional obligations would 
put an end to all such opinions and practices ; and that there is 
no justification for any of the principles on which they rest, or 
the proceedings to which they lead, to be found in natural law. 
And now it seems clear, that the only infallible rule of conduct, 
God's blessed Word, condemns in the most positive manner, all 
the pretexts concerning negro slavery, whether at the North or 
the South, upon which the public mind has been lashed into mad- 
ness. Slavery is an institution, Avhich revolutions neither per- 
petuate nor abolish, except under conditions wholly accidental. 
And if the anarchical spirit, whose seditious career we have 
traced, finally triumphs and this nation is destroyed — the real 
problem to be afterwards worked out will be, the ultimate do- 
minion of the White race, or of a mixed race essentially African, 
over the cotton region of this continent. Is the inaugurating of 
that problem, worth the ruin of this great nation? 

IV. 1. In attempting to develop the topic which remains, we 
are fully aware of the difficulties of the task. Both at the North 
and at the South, there are great parties thoroughly organized 
and acting in precisely opposite directions as to opinion, but one 
direction as effective as the other toward the common object of 
their labors — namely, the tearing of the nation to pieces. They 



1861.] OUK COUNTRY. 95 

who agree in nothing else, agree in the common desire for that 
result, which involves our national ruin. In the meantime, the 
immense popular masses at the North which have only partially 
cooperated with the organized party bent on destruction, or have 
fallen into minorities openly resisting that party — are neither or- 
ganized in fact, nor of one accord amongst themselves, except 
upon the single point, that they are suddenly awakened to the ex- 
treme peril of the situation, and are rapidly settling into a reso- 
lute purpose to avert the danger, if it is still possible. In the 
whole South, the condition of affairs is similar, but more perilous. 
The disruption of the Democratic party at Charleston and at Bal- 
timore, is susceptible of but three possible interpretations : it was 
an act of mere passion — or it was an act of deep intention, de- 
signed to produce exactly what has followed — or it was an act 
looking to the reconstruction of that party and to new endeavors 
for its permanent triumph as a national party. Recent events 
tend to show, that the disruption was made in the fixed sense of 
the second of these three possible interpretations ; or at any rate, 
in the contemplation, and perfect preparation of many leading men 
to take that alternative, even if they are not chargeable with having 
intentionally procured it. What occurred was, that the cotton 
growing South suddenly awoke to a consciousness, that a great and 
perfectly organized party in her bosom, was precipitating state 
after state into secession ; while in every seceding state — even in 
South Carolina — masses of the people, stunned by the suddenness 
and vehemence and thorough organization of the movement, were 
borne along by it, or made resistance only on collateral points, 
or remained in dissatisfied silence as the storm swept over them. 
And in all the remaining slave states, state after state became 
suddenly the theatre of a concerted agitation propagated origin- 
ally from South Carolina, and tending everywhere to the same 
violent result, by the same seditious proceedings, in the venerable 
names of state sovereignty and constitutional poAver. In these 
latter states, the resistance on the part of the community to this 
revolutionary fanaticism, was more in accordance with what be- 
came a free people ; and whatever the issue may be, the most of 
them, possibly every one of them, will reach it with a decorum, 
a gravity, and a public decency inseparable even in death itself 



^. OUR COUNTRY. [March, 

from all true greatness, on all great occasions. But these great 
popular masses throughout the fifteen slave states — emhracing all 
men who were not ready to rush into immediate secession, and 
embracing, therefore, the immense majority of the people in that 
half of the nation — were taken by surprise — cut up into three 
mutually hostile political parties — disorganized by an infinite di- 
versity of opinion — and destitute for the moment of great leaders 
to whom they could turn with a common consent. Rapidly, and 
by a movement almost spontaneous, public opinion, overborne for 
the moment in the six seceding states, and trembling in the bal- 
ance in several other states, appears to us to be consolidating in 
the greater number and the most powerful of those states, in a 
determinate manner, and upon fixed points. In them there is 
none of that frantic hostility to the union which has been ostenta- 
tiously manifested in other places ; but on the contrary, an avowed 
attachment to the union, and a declared purpose to maintain it, 
if it can be done consistently with their security, their honor, and 
their rights. In them, there is no disposition to contend for ex- 
treme rights, or to demand conditions which in changed circum- 
stances they would not grant themselves, much less to fly to arms 
by way of preliminary menace, or to look to foreign nations for 
aid in the execution of any designs present or future ; but on the 
contrary, there is an upright and an outspoken desire to adjust 
all existing troubles, and if possible to secure the future, upon 
terms of perfect equity and equality, such as ought to satisfy true 
men, and such as true men ought spontaneously to grant. Now 
it is not to confirmed Abolitionists of the North, nor is it to con- 
firmed Secessionists of the South, that any suggestions of peace 
need be made, or any terms of honorable composition need be pro- 
pounded, which look to the preservation of a country which they 
do not profess to love, and the salvation of institutions which they 
own they abhor. But it is to the great, true, and faithful people of 
the glorious American Nation that must not be destroyed, no matter 
of what sovereign state they may be citizens, and no matter how 
much they may now appear to be scattered and disorganized ; that 
suggestions of peace, and justice, and fraternity, looking to end- 
less and boundless glory and prosperity, may be offered, with a 
good hope through God, that they may enter into the mass of 



1861.] OUR COUNTRY. 97 

human thought, and be felt according to the wisdom that may be 
in them. 

2. Let it be observed, that the free states and the slave states 
occupy in some respects totally different positions, relatively to 
the difficulties about slavery, and to the ground on which those 
difficulties are to be adjusted. With the North, the whole affair is 
a sentiment — an opinion. With the South, it is an affair of life 
and death. The North has not one dollar of estate at stake — the 
South has four thousand millions of dollars invested in slaves. 
The North has not one dollar of income directly dependent on 
slavery — the South has an annual income of two hundred and 
fifty millions dependent directly on slave labour. Moreover, there 
are no negro slaves among the nineteen millions of people in the 
eighteen free states — so that all questions of a national aspect 
tending to influence slavery, are perfectly void of force as to the 
interior peace, quiet, and security, of all these eighteen states ; 
whereas the fifteen slave states have four millions of slaves dis- 
persed through their eight millions of white people, and every na- 
tional question that can, in any of its bearings, either agitate or 
quiet this vast slave population, is of itself a question, between 
different nations, of war or peace. Still further, the institution 
of slavery has no necessary bearing whatever, upon the social, 
economical, personal or political condition of any state or individ- 
ual at the North ; whereas it is thoroughly interwoven with every 
fibre of society at the South — and as an institution is so pervad- 
ing in its effects wherever it exists, that a community long trained 
in the forms of life connected with it, does not incur the change 
in\x)lved in its destruction, except under some most powerful im- 
pulse. And again, this nation was once a nation composed exclu- 
sively of slave states — and if in the progress of events the greater 
part of the states become free states — every consideration of 
decency and good faith obliges those thus changing their condition 
to be more and more, instead of less and less, observant of the 
duties and even the proprieties they owe to those who remain in 
the condition once common to all. And, to suggest nothing 
more, the preponderating power of the free states in the Union, 
added to the unscrupulous and disloyal principles avowed and 
propagated, to a greater or less extent, in every one of them 

VOL. I. — NO. 1. T 



98 OUR COUNTRY. [March, 

during the last thirty years ; obliges the North, by every consid- 
eration of prudence, of equity, and of magnanimity, to concede 
to the South all that the spirit of their mutual engagements re- 
quire, instead of striving to rob her of every security which is not 
expressed in the narrowest letter of the law. So clear is this con- 
trolling aspect of the subject, and so deeply does it enter into the 
convictions of all just men, that, on the one hand, the whole feel- 
ing of loyalty to the Union in the South, is connected with an 
abiding confidence that the North will act as becomes her in this 
emergency ; and on the other hand, with an unshaken purpose, in 
the Union or out of it, to vindicate the security, the equality, and 
the rights, of slave States. It is upon these two points — can the 
South rely upon the North — and can the South maintain her 
vital interests in union — that public opinion in the slave States 
which have not seceded, is struggling at this moment. For 
our own part, thoroughly convinced that both of those questions 
ought to be ansAvered in the affirmative, we must not disguise that 
the thousands of loyal and patriotic men who have reached an op- 
posite conclusion, and under it have been precipitated, by the force 
of a trained and long organized conspiracy, unto fatal proceedings ; 
are able to render reasons for their want of confidence, to which 
coming ages Avill say, the North ought to have given earlier and 
more considerate heed. It is idle to attempt here, a statement of 
particular aggressions, upon a case so large, so long continued, so 
aggravating, and so palpable. If there is one sentiment perfectly 
cordial, and perfectly unanimous throughout the fifteen slave 
States, it is that they have just cause of complaint; a sentiment 
in which it is extremely probable, that the actual majority of the 
entire North would to some extent concur. Nay, the very form 
of any amicable settlement that can ever be made, reveals the true 
nature of the case — as every possible statement of it must show. 
3. There are two points upon which the South has made up its 
mind, and Avhich are decisive, one Avay or the other, of the whole 
matter ; and upon which the course Avhich the North may take, 
will either arrest the farther spread of the secession pestilence, 
and under firm and temperate treatment, as we have before shown, 
will probably bring back the seceding States ; or will probably 
throw the whole nation into a state of political convulsion, the 



1861.] OUR COUNTRY. Q9 

end of which no man can conjecture, and no living man will see. 
These two points relate, 1. To the fair and complete execution of 
the provisions of the Federal Constitution, made expressly in 
favor of property in slaves — and most especially the provision 
for the rendition of fugitive slaves : 2. To the recognition of the 
perfect equality of the slave States with the free States, under 
the Federal Constitution, in all things — and most especially in 
the matter of Federal Territories. We will briefly treat of 
each of these points separately. And as it appears to us 
very clear that adequate power exists under the Federal Consti- 
tution to settle both points in a fair, complete, and satisfiictory 
manner — we will not enter upon the discussion of any of the 
proposed changes in that instrument. There are also several in- 
cidental questions, such as slavery in the District of Columbia, 
the migration of slaves from one slave State to another, and the 
like, which we shall not discuss ; since, as we doubt not, the 
settlement of the real question will draw after it the settlement 
of the rest ; and a refusal to settle them renders all discussion of 
the others idle. 

4. If any one will compare the unquestionable right of the 
owners of slaves, secured by the Federal Constitution, to have 
them delivered to them in the States to which they may escape, 
with what has occured during many past years with reference to 
the fair and sincere enforcement of this right, in any Northern 
State where its enforcement has been attempted, — or with the 
average aggregate conduct of the whole North upon the subject; 
he will be struck with astonishment, in proportion as he gets a 
complete idea of what the border slave States have suffered, and 
of the demoralized condition of opinion at the North on the whole 
subject, and of the utter wickedness of the organized robbery 
which has been systematically carried on. IMark — the Constitu- 
tion of the nation expressly requires the rendition of slaves when 
they escape. Then observe, that along the border common to Ohio 
and Kentucky, slaves have been systematically enticed from their 
owners, by organized societies in Ohio, and carried off by ar- 
rangements so extensive, so complete, and so effectual, that along 
the entire border between those States, two or three counties deep, 
slavery is totally insecure in Kentucky. Along the frontier of 



l"^ OUR COUNTRY. [March, 

all the other border slave States, a similar system of organized 
plunder has been in active operation. To what extent the system 
penetrates the interior regions of the slave States, it is difficult to 
say ; but it is known that emissaries from the North have syste- 
matically pervaded the entire South, in every imaginable disguise, 
schoolmaster, pedler, agent, quack, preacher, labourer — every 
thing — making known to the slaves the routes and methods of 
escape, and instilling into their minds principles that result in 
house-burning, poisoning, murder, and rape, if escape is impossi- 
ble. What success has attended these diabolical proceedings, 
with regard to the whole number of slaves stolen, we have no 
better means of knoAving than the published statement of jour- 
nals that advocate the robbery : and after allowing for much 
boasting on their part, prompted by very obvious reasons, the 
number can hardly be set lower than a yearly average of ten 
thousand slaves — worth little short of ten millions of dollars — 
for some years past. Nor must it be forgotten, that although 
large sums of money are contributed by fanatics throughout the 
North, to the yearly support of these operations, yet the imme- 
diate agents of the work make it very profitable. We, and many 
hundred persons, have personal knowledge of a case which oc- 
curred a few years ago in Kentucky, in Avhich between fifty and 
sixty negro men Avere attempted to be run olf at one time, from 
Lexington and the surrounding region ; in which the fee of the 
Avhite organizer and leader of the company varied, according to 
the success of the negroes in stealing, from tAventy-five to one 
hundred and fifty dollars, each. In that case the party was sur- 
prised Avhen near the Ohio River, and the slaves recovered ; and 
the white man is noAv in the Kentucky Penitentiary — instead of 
being lynched, as he Avould have been any where but in one of the 
finest communities in the Avorld. Now let it be further observed, 
that this state of horrible perfidy, though notorious at the North, 
instead of aAvaking the universal horror of the community, finds 
the fundamental principles which underlie it, gradually pen- 
etrating in all directions; widely influential journals advocating 
them ; supporters of them sitting in many State Legislatures, 
and in both Houses of Congress ; political parties impregnated 
with them ; the laws of many States changed so as to give them 



1861.] OUR COUNTRY. 101' 

security ; the current literature deeply imbued with them ; and to 
crown all, the ministers of religion, to the extent almost of whole 
sects and denominations, making them the chief themes of their 
instruction from the pulpit. We do not enumerate the election 
of Mr. Lincoln as the climax, and final triumph of these princi- 
ples : on the contrary, it is clear to us that his nomination for the 
Presidency is to be accounted evidence of a reaction against 
them : and we know of little in the modern history of parties, 
braver, or more manly, than his unflinching and reiterated decla- 
rations, that the South is entitled to an effective law for the ren- 
dition of fugitive slaves, and to its effective execution. 

5. That is precisely what the whole South demands. Planted 
on the Constitution — loyal to it and to the country — the evi- 
dence of the wrongs she has endured written on the whole face of 
society North and South, Mr. Lincoln himself has long ago spoken 
the brave and true word; the South is entitled to an effective law, 
and to its effective execution, whereby these outrages shall be put 
down forever. The time to discuss the propriety of putting such 
a clause in the Federal Constitution, terminated seventy years 
ago. The time to plead conscientious scruples for breach of faith 
founded on the alleged immorality of property in slaves, Avill 
come after it is shown that a nation can exist — much less that a 
free people can tranquilly sustain a common government, for the 
sake of enabling one half to plunder and degrade the other half. 
One of the worst symptoms of the case is manifested in the indi- 
rect manner in which many Northern States have endeavoured to 
defeat the execution of public law by unfriendly legislation, di- 
rected in some instances against their own citizens, in some 
against citizens of the South, and in some against both ; and in, 
not only an apparent popular approval of such laws, and the most 
stolid indifference to the matter on the part of those who did not 
approve them, but even in their careful and well-considered de- 
fense by some of the ablest and best men in the North, as being 
without serious objection in principle. That is, all the people in 
Massachusetts being both citizens of that State and citizens of 
the United States, and there being nobody there to act in either 
capacity, except those who must act in both ; what follows under 
this new political morality, and what is attempted under the pre- 



102 OUR COUNTRY. [March, 

text of religious scruples is — that the people of Massachusetts 
as citizens of the United States acknowledge the obligation rest- 
ing on them under the Federal Constitution for the rendition of fu- 
gitive slaves in Massachusetts ; and at the same moment as citizens 
of the State, they pass laws refusing the use of their prisons and 
making it criminal for their officers or even their citizens to assist, 
and contrive remedies whereby the owner who seeks to recover 
his slave may be arrested as a trespasser, or even imprisoned as 
a felon. It is an exceedingly palpable instance, on a large scale, 
of v>rhat resources were possessed by those fortunate and unscru- 
pulous gentlemen of a past age, ayIio were princes and bishops at 
the same time. In point of morals, such pretexts are simply 
scandalous. In private life, no man who resorts to them can be 
held to be a gentleman — or in pecuniary transactions, can be 
considered honest. In public life, such attempts are chargeable 
with the folly and wickedness of begetting conflicts of civil and 
political duties in mere Avantonness — or Avith being, as we have 
before shown they are, the organized results of that seditious 
spirit of anarchy which is destroying our country, and which a 
better public sentiment must crush wherever it exists, before so- 
ciety can be safe in any part of it. The people of the free States, 
wherever and in so far as thc}^ have been seduced into such legis- 
lation, owe to public morality, to their own character, and to their 
highest interests, not less than to their constitutional obligations 
as citizens of the United States, and the mutual relations of the 
States to each other under our noble institutions ; to erase at 
once all State enactments that cast obloquy on their own national 
obligations, or look towards the dishonor or the obstruction of 
the just and unquestionable claims of others upon them. And 
we rejoice Avith all our heart at the indication in so many portions 
of the North, that what is right will be promptly done in this 
matter ; and by this means, one of the steps indispensable to the 
permanent maintainance of our institutions be firmly taken, and 
the friends of the Union every Avhere, but especially in the South, 
have a noble vindication of their resolute confidence that the na- 
tion Avas still sound at heart. 

6. The other point of the two which the whole nation perceives 
to be fundamental, relates to the equality of the States in the 



1861.] OUR COUNTRY. 



103 



Union, and especially as that bears upon the question of slavery 
in the Federal Territories, as we have already stated. The great 
idea of all our institutions, though complex, is perfectly clear. 
We constitute one nation, whose people, however, are divided into 
many sovereign States. We have no nation but as we have these 
States ; and we have no States but as they make this nation ; and 
our people are citizens both of the nation and of some particular 
State — and strictly speaking, to be one involves the other. The 
fundamental principle of our liberty is the sovereignty, not of 
governments, but of society itself — the people; and the deepest 
foundation of this sovereignty of the people, is their right to 
change, to order, and to interpret, their political and civil institu- 
tions, by voting ; to do this as separate States where the matter 
relates exclusively to the particular State — to do it in concert 
where it relates to the nation. In the exercise of this sovereign 
power the people of this nation have made all then- constitiitions — 
the very oldest of which now existing is the Federal Constitution. 
And the broad distinction between that Constitution made for the 
nation, which by its nature and its terms is supreme over all in its 
proper sphere, and the Constitutions made for the States respec- 
tively, is simply this ; that by the former no powers are conferred 
on the General Go^^ernment created by it except such as are ex- 
pressly enumerated and such as are incidental and necessary 
thereto ; and that by the latter all powers residing in society are 
conferred on the State Governments created by them, except such 
as are expressly withheld by Bills of Right, or some similar device. 
We do not mean that these results are inherent and inevitable ; but 
we mean that these are the facts — the great and wise things ac- 
tually accomphshed by oiu* ancestors. In the balancing of the 
powers of the Federal and State Governments, and in defining and 
ordering their mutual spheres and extent, lies that wide debatable 
ground over which statesmen have fought their battles, and organ- 
ized parties. Amongst these battles none have been more hotly 
fought, or more perilous to the country, than the one which has 
been waged over this question of Slavery in the Federal Terri- 
tories. What we propose, is not to enter into a history of these 
difficulties — nor to discuss the soundness of any of the conflicting 
interpretations of the Constitution, upon which the extreme claims 



:KM OUR COUNTRY. [March, 

of hostile parties or sections rest; but to accept the actual and 
notorious posture of the whole affau' — and having pointed out, in 
the nature of oiu' system of government, the ground and the char- 
acter of the real difficulty, to state the principles on which alone, 
as it appears to us, the integrity of the Union between slave States 
and free States can be preserved. 

7. There are three possible results to the matter, namely : all 
the Territories may become free States, or all may become slave 
States, or some may become one, and some may become the other. 
No one who has a grain of common sense, can suppose it to be 
possible for either of the first two results to occur, by any peace- 
ful means, or that the general government can throw its influence 
systematically in favour of either of them, without breaking up 
the confederacy — or that extensive combinations of States on 
either side to secure either result, can terminate otherwise than 
in war. It follows, therefore, that the practical enforcement of 
the dogma on which Mr. Lincoln comes into power, namely, that 
there shall be no more slavery in the Territories, is impossible 
otherwise than by means of the dissolution of the Union, and the 
subsequent conquest of one portion of the country by the other. 
But Mr. Lincoln and his party, if they are insane enough to push 
their dogma to that terrible issue, will — to say nothing of their 
other perils — probably find themselves arrested, as soon as they 
show that they are in earnest, by a counter revolution at the 
North, which will crush the diabolical conspiracy. Admitting 
that the Congress of the United States has absolute power over 
the National Territories — and admitting that the Northern States 
had the permanent control of both Houses of Congress ; we have not 
the least idea, that a congress and a national administration in 
this, or any other free country, would encounter the peril, and 
heap on themselves the degradation of attempting to rob numer- 
ous States and many millions of people, all subject to the same 
government, and all portions of the same nation with themselves, of 
their total share in an imperial inheritance. Such ideas may be 
made efi"ectual in the organization of parties, and may assume 
prominence in popular movements ; but when it becomes necessary 
to give them legal form and validity, to enforce them at the point 
of the bayonet, to risk counter-revolution in support of them, to 



1861.] OUE COUNTRY. 105 

establish them upon the ruins of society, and cover either the tri- 
umph or the failure of the attempt with the detestation of man- 
kind, their evasion, in some way or other, is one of those uncon- 
trollable necessities of responsible power, before which human 
passions bow in reverent awe. In like manner, the opposite ex- 
treme opinion and claim, is in its nature equally incapable of being 
realized. Admitting it to be true, that by the Constitution of the 
United States, every Federal Territory is dedicated to slavery, 
until on becoming a State, the people abolish it by a sovereign 
act ; and admitting that the Supreme Court has the power to estab- 
lish, beyond reversal, this sense of the Constitution, and that it 
has done so in a case regularly before it, and demanding for its 
decision the settlement of this point; still the practical enforce- 
ment of the thing, is both morally and politically impossible. We 
have not the least idea, that a congress composed exclusively of 
Southern men, could be gathered by popular election, that would 
entertain a proposition to rob free States weaker than themselves, 
of their share of a common inheritance, upon any plea that can 
be imagined ; Ave do not believe the majority of any slave State 
would enforce such a proposition ; we do not believe that any 
Southern gentleman would execute such a scheme. Moreover, 
the political impossibility is complete; and in the actual state of the 
country as presented by the relative number and power of the free 
and slave States, and as exhibited by the state of opinion every- 
where — the notion of establishing slavery in all the national Ter- 
ritories as of constitutional right, has about the same practical 
value as the notion of securing all those Territories for slavery, by 
secession. Now, let it be borne in mind, that we have taken these 
claims and the demands on the one side and the other, as being 
founded on truths that are undeniable, and rights that are unques- 
tionable ; and have pointed out the impossibility of any just, prac- 
tical, or peaceful result, in the direction indicated on either side. 
How immeasurably is that conclusion strengthened, when it is 
considered that there is not a truth asserted, a principle laid 
down, or a claim advanced on either side, that is not vehemently 
repudiated by about half the population of the nation ! Well may 
we assert the complete impossibility both of excluding slavery 
from all the Territories, and of establishing it in them all y and de- 



106 OUR COUNTRY. [March, 

no\mce the wickedness of all parties who persist in such endeavors. 
Those Territories, if the nation survives, must necessarily be, and 
ought to be, partly slave and partly free. Political necessity de- 
mands it, public justice requires it, all true statesmanship points 
to that result, the undisturbed force of events would terminate in 
that issue, and all attempts to prevent it are founded in consider- 
ations forbidden alike by wisdom, by equity, and by patriotism ; 
and will end in crime, and misery, and dishonour, precisely in the 
degree that they are successful. If the country shall be destroyed, 
the chief importance of the questions on which our ruin is brought 
about, will afterwards be, that all men may see how scandalous 
were the pretexts upon which the noblest product of human civil- 
ization was made desolate. 

8. The national domain not embraced by the boundaries of any 
existing State, amounts to one and a half, or two millions of square 
miles ; an area much greater than that covered by all the States 
lying between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mississippi River ; not 
much less, perhaps, than the area covered by all the present 
States. That the peojDle of the larger and more numerous free 
States should combine to exclude the people of the weaker and 
less numerous slave States, from the enjoyment of the whole of 
this immense inheritance, is an outrage so preposterous, that 
one is the less astonished that it should react in a counter com- 
bination to establish slavery in the whole of it; and while the 
pretext of conscientious scruples for seizing all was the natural, be- 
cause the only one, however ignoble, which the strong could use — 
the counter resort of the weaker party was also natural, and the 
only one they could make but war, namely, extreme constitutional 
right, countenanced by their construction of a political judgment 
of the Supreme Court. In effect, as there are but three possible so- 
lutions of the case, as has just been shown, so there are but three 
possible methods in which the case can be solved. One is by an 
equitable partition of the common inheritance, founded on the mu- 
tual recognition by the parties of the undeniable fact that it is a 
common property : a second is, for the owners of the inheritance 
to determine to fight out their opposite claims in each particular 
Territory — somewhat after the manner of the Kansas affaii' : the 
third is, to dissolve the Union, and fight out the opposing claims 



1861.] OUR COUNTRY. 107 

afterwards, leaving the Territories like every thing else, in a state 
of anarchy, useless to either party. It is indeed conceivable that 
after dissolving the Union, men might recover their senses, and be 
capable, as alien enemies to each other, of acting with a degree of 
mutual forbearance and justice, Avhich if practiced when they were 
united by the most sacred bonds, would have kept them friends for- 
ever. The probability of such a miracle, every one will determine 
for himself; as well as the probability that the future inhabitants 
of the vast region thrown away by the nation in its disgraceful par- 
oxysms, will put faith enough irt such miracles to respect any par- 
tition of them amongst the fragments of a disbanded confederacy. 
It is in vain that we would evade the sacred duties which press us, 
and from whose performance there is no escape that does not at 
the same moment brand us with infamy, and hurry us towards des- 
truction. There is but one possible result that is just and right — 
and there is but one possible way of reaching that result that is 
either sure, fair, or peaceful : but that result, and that way of reach- 
ing it, are perfectly obvious — and when once recognized and pur- 
sued, they remove whatever difficulty the fair and complete 
execution of the duty to restore fugitive slaves leaves to be re- 
moved. It is upon these two points, as we have tried in all fair- 
ness to show, that the nation is bound and obliged to set herself 
right — that the people are required to make their majestic voice 
audible above the clam.or of factions, and that all good men are 
called of God, by word and by deed, to rebuke on every side the 
phrenzy of the hour. 

9. The particular mode in which ,this recognition of the common 
right of all the States in the national Territories, should be made ; 
and the particular way and extent to which practical efficacy 
shall, at the moment, be given to that recognition ; do not appear 
to us to be matters of very high importance in themselves, or mat- 
ters which it is necessary that we should discuss here. An effec- 
tual law, and its effectual execution, concerning the rendition of 
fugitive slaves; a sincere recognition of the common right of all 
the States in the national domain, and the mutual abandonment 
by the North and the South of all claim and attempt to make all 
the Territories either free or slave : it is upon these points that a 
good understanding, will settle all the rest — and that a refusal to 



108 OUR COUNTRY. [Marcli, 

come to such an understanding, will throw upon those so acting 
the whole responsibility of all that may follow. The foregone 
conclusions of political parties, and the previous committals of 
public men, are utterly insignificant in any true appreciation of 
the interests now at stake. The propounding of particular the- 
ories, or of special lines of policy, or of lists of propositions, or any 
thing of the sort — by State Legislatures, by resolutions in Con- 
gress, by Conventions of the people, or in any other way — where 
the design or the effect is to embarrass or to obstruct the indis- 
pensable settlement, is either a great weakness, or a covert attempt 
to prevent any settlement. The demand of either party to have 
a division of the Territories that is grossly unequal, is that far un- 
just, and a manifestation of the same spirit of claiming all, which has 
already Avrought so much mischief. And with a million or two of 
square miles of national domain, not yet embraced in any State, 
with a country large enough to contain fifty or a hundred times its 
present population — and with instant difiiculties which have al- 
ready produced the most terrible calamities, and whose early settle- 
ment maybe indispensable to the prevention of universal revolu- 
tion ; the purpose to make that settlement depend upon an explicit 
agreement concerning the disposition we will hereafter make of for- 
eign states, which we may possibly conquer or purchase at some 
future day ; can be considered nothing else than a purpose of pre- 
venting the possibility of any settlement. Beyond all doubt, if the 
free States consider that the main use of our Constitutional Union 
and our continued national existence, is the extinction of negro 
slavery on this continent ; or if the slave States consider that the 
chief value of those incalculable advantages, lies in the use of them 
for the indefinite extension of slavery ; the knell of our destiny is 
struck — and our glory, our felicity, and our triumph are as a tale 
that has been told. 

V. 1. We have said, on a previous page, that the revolution in 
the seceding States would not stop where it now is, and that the 
course it would hereafter take, depended* upon causes in some de- 
gree appreciable now ; of which causes we enumerated those which 
appeared to us most important in the production of such results as 
would restore those States to their former position in the nation. 
Amongst them, the conduct of the Federal government towards 



1861.] OUR COUNTRY. 109 

the seceding States — according as it might be firm and yet 
temperate, or as it might be vacillating and timid, was enumer- 
ated as a decided element of the future. No one can doubt that 
this is true, or fail to experience great anxiety on the sub- 
ject. We feel no disposition to speak confidently about pro- 
ceedings of the general government not yet adequately ex- 
plained; nor, under any circumstances, to judge the President 
harshly. We consider Mr. Buchanan to be situated just in that 
manner, that if he saves his country, posterity will forgive him 
much, and place his name high on the roll of history ; but that if, 
either by his own fault, or by the fatal temper of the times, his ad- 
ministration is made the term of his country's grand career, he 
must be classed with the greatest victims of misfortune. Few have 
presided at obsequies that ought to have been so illustrious — 
and that threaten to be so ignominious. Apparently the sport of 
a Cabinet divided into factions, of which one was irresolute, anr 
other neither loyal to him nor to the country, and the isolated 
members without authority ; the use made of the national admin- 
istration seems to have been to promote the interest of the lead- 
ers of sedition ; until the President found himself with no alterna- 
tive but to sacrifice alike his official duty and his personal honour, 
or at a most perilous moment, to reconstruct his Cabinet on the 
basis of one or two faithful and able men, the remnant of his old 
advisers. There may be some ground for difierence of opinion as 
to the probable result, if the same conduct had been pursued by 
the administration from the beginning, as has been since the re- 
construction of the Cabinet. Nothing short of complete success, 
rendered only more difiicult by his oayu previous conduct, can now 
avert from the President, the stern condemnation of posterity. 
And the secession party, prompt, diligent, and sagacious, after se- 
curing from Mr. Buchanan the utterance of such opinions, and 
the acquiescence in such proceedings, as rendered their first organ- 
ized movements safe from interruption ; and after treating all 
national rights that stood in the way of their subsequent move- 
ments as mere nullities, and all national property in their reach 
as lawful plunder ; are now diligently engaged in propagating the 
sentiment, that all attempts of the nation even to expire with de- 
cency, much less to defend its dignity, its honour, its authority, 



110' OUR COUNTRY. [March, 

its military posts, or its property, should be esteemed outrages on 
sovereign States — and be condemned as acts of useless folly that 
can lead only to bloodshed ; seeing that the premeditated vfork is 
done, and all composition is impossible. At the same critical mo- 
ment, a signal change manifests itself in the bosom of the party 
in the North, Avhich resists all fair settlement, and yet dreads pop- 
ular revolution there. As long as threats of violence were parti- 
ticularly empty and insulting, they were hurled at the South. 
Now, when their disloyal hopes point in another direction, the 
method they take to avert the coming reaction which may save the 
country, is to unite in vehement protests against what they are 
pleased to designate as coercion. If the nation, first deluded and 
then disgraced, can be paralyzed — and the whole South driven 
into secession — the extreme party at the North, and the extreme 
party at the South, each gains its special ends ; and the mass of 
the people every where, and especially in the great Central States, 
may, at their leisure, wake to the reality of a situation fatal and 
detestable to them — which it would have been far easier for them 
to have prevented, than it will be to correct. In short, it is to deter 
the national govei-nment from every act which can even tend to 
restore the supremacy of the Constitution, and the integrity of 
the nation, that the cry against what they call coercion, is substi- 
tuted for the cry against what they called oppression, in the first 
stages of the revolt. 

2. It is deplorable, in every stage and act of this sad drama, 
how an almost preternatural ingenuity of error has trifled with the 
noblest impulses of the people, and with the simplest truths 
which support all our institutions. Let the dominant party in 
South Carolina start with the political fiilsehood, that the people 
of that State are not citizens of the United States, except through 
the constitution and government of that State ; and let the Na- 
tional Administration start with the corresponding political false- 
hood, that the supreme law of the land cannot be enforced towards 
the people of South Carolina, contrary to the wishes and acts of 
this dominant party ; and let both parties concur in the additional 
political falsehood, that the ruin of society is better than the risk 
of collision with any body in enforcing the laws: then, of 
course, nullification, secession, sedition, revolution, anarchy — 



1861.] OUR COUNTRY. Ill 

are inevitable products of the organization of society, and public 
order, and regulated liberty, and the security of property and life 
become more and more impossible as the organization of society 
becomes more and more perfect. We pointed out, on a previous 
page — when exposing the perfidy of the pretext resorted to in jus- 
tifying the conduct of dominant parties in some of the free States, 
touching the rendition of fugitive slaves — the simple and obvious 
refutation, founded in the double citizenship of the people of the 
United States; and here the refutation is just as clear, and 
is founded on the same truth. By the express terms, as well 
as by the very nature of the Federal Constitution, a secession 
ordinance in the South is as totally void as a personal liberty 
law in the North possibly can be. The Federal Government 
has no more need to deal with the South Carolina convention, 
in executing the post office laws, the revenue laws, or any 
other laws — than it has to deal with the Massachusetts Legisla- 
ture in executing the fugitive slave law ; and there was no more 
legal necessity, nor any more logical consistency, in diatribes 
about lack of power to coerce a State, in one case than the other. 
There was no need, nor any power, to coerce a State, in either case ; 
but in both cases the need was urgent, and the power was com- 
plete, to execute the Laws of the United States upon everi/ citizen 
of the United States, whatever relation he might happen to occupy 
towards any one of the States ; and to enforce those laws against 
all wrong doers. Nor is there any consideration arising out of 
the nature or the form of the opposition, that may be made to the 
execution of the supreme law, which can go farther than to ad- 
dress itself to the sound discretion of the national government, 
in the way of determining the most proper and effectual, and at 
the same time the least arbitrary, perilous, and destructive method 
of overcoming the resistance that is made. If the President, in 
the exercise of this discretion, allows millions of dollars worth of 
national property in buildings, in cash, in munitions of war, to 
be seized and held by citizens of the United States in avowed re- 
volt against the general government ; if he permits them to take 
forcible possession of the national fortresses, and hold them in 
armed hostility to the nation ; if he permits the officers and sol- 
diers of the army of the United States, to be taken prisoners of 



112 OUR COUNTRY. [March, 

war, and treated by hostile commanders as captured enemies ; if 
he permits armies to be organized, munitions of war to be col- 
lected, batteries to be directed against the national fortresses ; if 
he permits the flag of the nation to be torn down from the public 
edifices and fortresses, and hostile flags to be planted on them — 
nay, permits that proud emblem of our national unity and force 
to be fired on with impunity, when it covers an armed force of the 
nation ; if he allows the mail to be broken open and the corres- 
pondence of the government itself to be tampered with ; the for- 
eign commerce of the country to be interrupted and the revenue 
from it seized ; the internal commerce to be menaced by batte- 
ries erected under State authority on our great water courses ; if, 
to add no more, he permits ambassadors from secession conven- 
tions and assemblies to menace him with war in the capital of 
the nation, and conspirators plotting the military occupation of 
the Federal City, to go unpunished : it really appears to us that 
the most nervous secessionist might consider the question of co- 
ercion, as being about as offensive to the President as to himself. 
Every man who has any remaining loyalty to the nation, or any 
hope or desire for the restoration of the seceding States to the 
confederacy ; must see that what is meant by the outcry against 
coercion is in the interest of secession, and that what is meant is 
in effect, that the Federal government must be terrified or seduced 
into complete cooperation with the revolution, Avhich it was its 
most binding duty to have used all its power and influence to 
prevent. 

3. We believe it is the desire of the American people that the 
present revolution should be brought to such a conclusion that 
the seceding States shall all be restored to their position in the 
nation ; and that to this end such a settlement of existing difl[iculties 
shall be made, as will effectually and peacefully secure this re- 
sult. In order to that, it is impossible for the nation to permit 
anything to be done by the general government, which will take 
for granted that the state of exaggerated and disloyal opinion either 
in the extreme North or the extreme South, is irrevocably fixed as 
a final and sovereign expression. On the contrary, what the na- 
tion must take for granted, as the basis of every hope of peaceful 
Success, is that a revolution in opinion must take place in both 



1861.] OUR COUNTRY. 113 

quarters, in view of the imminent peril of our position. But beyond 
all doubt, every thing that can strengthen the hands of the party 
now dominant, either at the extreme North or the extreme South 
— must weaken every hope of any revolution in opinion — every 
hope of a solution at once peaceful and successful. Nothing could 
be so fatal as the conviction in the mind of loyal citizens, both in 
the extreme North and the extreme South, that the nation does 
not sympathise with them, and will abandon them. It is, there- 
fore, sheer folly to weaken the postm^e of the general government 
towards the secession movement. The duties of that government, 
are perfectly clear as to their natui'e — no matter how difficult 
they may be as to the mode of their performance. The nation 
has no alternative, for the moment, but to abide the firm and sin- 
cere performance of those duties, — meantime striving for a settle- 
ment of the whole difficulty. If the seceding States follow up 
their past outrages by rushing into war with the nation, no matter 
on what pretext, that will only prove that the pestilence has 
already gone beyond the reach of peaceful remedies. On the 
other hand, let it be taken for granted that the nation cannot be 
saved — and that a peaceful separation, if that be possible, is the 
best hope of all parties. Even in that case, and with a view to 
that result, the position of the general government towards the 
seceding States should be one of forbearance and moderation in- 
deed, but of unalterable firmness. The nation has an interest in 
the manner of this supposed separation, hardly inferior to its in- 
terest in preventing any separation : nor is the interest of the 
States that may go out, less permanent and fundamental in the 
right ordering of that great, and as we think terrible result, than 
any they may suppose they have in founding a new empire. That 
this particular constitutional government should fail, is dreadful 
enough ; but we owe it to ourselves, to the glorious cause of con- 
stitutional government, and indeed to the human race, that we 
should not establish by our downfall the imbecility of republican 
freedom ; but, on the contrary, that the very wreck of our institu- 
tions should exhibit the principles of constitutional Hberty — in 
contrast with every aspect of anarchy — and in all their unaltera- 
ble force and beauty. Let our ruin be the thousandth proof of 
the violence of human passions, and the instability of human 
VOL. I. — NO. 1. 8 



114 OUR COUNTRY. [March, 

hopes: let it not be a damning evidence against constitutional 
government. To us nothing appears more certain, than that look- 
ing to either result, the nation has no necessity more imperative, 
as means to any endurable result, than that the Federal Govern- 
ment — instead of shrinking from its true position on the one hand, 
or resorting to needless violence on the other — should accept its 
true mission as the representative of the nation, and so to a great 
extent master of the situation, and pilot the ark in which such 
transcendent treasures are embarked, courageously amidst the 
howling waters. God will bring it to the right haven : for the 
prayers of many hundreds of thousands of his children — lie yet 
unanswered before his face. 

4. It is from a single point of view that we have conducted this 
exposition, and it is unto one single result, that we have directed 
it. The point of view is that of one steadily beholding the immi- 
nent and deadly peril of his country — nay, its ruin, already in some 
degree accomplished, and hastening to be complete ; and the single 
result developed, is the salvation of the country — the ivliole coun- 
try. Many topics have, therefore, been passed in silence, which, 
from any other point of view, or in expounding any other result, 
would have required careful treatment ; and many other topics 
eminently pertinent here, have been omitted, because we have al- 
ready discussed them on a recent occasion.* It is of the last im- 
portance, that we should not be deceived by appearances, or mis- 
led either by our hopes or our terrors. The voice that can alone 
silence the storm that is raging around us — the hand that is alone 
competent to grasp and to crush every element of disorder — that 
voice has not yet spoken, that hand has not yet put forth its 
strength : it is the voice and the hand of this great nation. It is 
time for it to speak — time for it to act. If we may dare to trust 
all the lessons of the past, it will be true to itself — true to every 
one who is faithful to it. In that case we are safe ; though we 
may suffer much and long before the end is reached. Our civili- 

* See " Discourse of Dr. Robert J. Brecke\ridge. Delivered at Lexington^ 
Ey., January iih, 1861; on the Day of National Uumiliation." It lias been widely 
published iu the Newspapers, both secular and religious, and in pamphlet form 
by Hull cj- Brother, Louisville, Ky. ; Faran ^ McLean, Cincinnati, Ohio ; Woods^ 
Baltimore, Md. ; and perhaps iu other places by other persons. 



1861.] IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 115 

zation, in its present form, is the growth of nearly a century — 
the growth of two centuries and a half on this continent — the 
growth of all preceding ages in the old world, before its best 
inhabitants came hither, to construct society afresh out of all 
the treasures of the past. The gigantic oaks of the forest are 
not planted more deeply — the everlasting mountains have not 
a surer foundation — than our American Civilization. Let the 
nation stir itself as a giant, waking from his slumber. Let the 
voice of God be heard amongst us, as the voice of many waters, 
and as the voice of a great thunder. Let us not hold our peace, 
— let us not rest, till the peril is overpassed, that we should be 
termed Forsaken and our land be termed Desolate — nor till our 
country be as a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and as 
a royal diadem in the hand of our God 1 

* 



DR. BRECKINRIDGE'S THIRD ARTICLE ON TUE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 



"STATE OF THE COUNTRY." 



BY THE 

REV. ROBERT J. BRECKINRIDGE, D. D., LL.D. 

PROFESSOR IN DANVILLE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 



REPRINTED FROM THE DxVNVILLE QUARTERLY REVIEW, FOR JUNE, 1861. 



CINCINNATI: 

PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE OF THE DANVILLE REVIEW, 

No. 25 WEST FOURTH STREET. 

1861. 



292 STATE OF THE COUNTRY. [June, 



Art. V, — State of the Country. 

I. Civil "War. — Influence upon it, of the Idea of the Restoration of • 

the Union. 

II. The long and terrible reign of Parties. Majestic Reappearance 

of the Nation on the scene of Affairs. Great Truths accepted, 
and to be maintained. 

III. Duty of the Nation to loyal citizens in the Seceded States. Their 
subjection to a Reign of Terror. Alleged unanimity in the 
Seceded States. 

IV. The Seceded States may return to the Union — or the Secession 
Party may maintain their Revolt by Arms. The War one of 
Self-Preservation on the part of the Nation. Not aggressive and 
against the South — but defensive and against Secessionists. 
Supposing the Triumph of the Secessionists ; insuperable difficul- 
ties. Every benefit contemplated by Secession, defeated by the 
War into which it plunged. Restoration to the Union the true 
Result. 

V. Miscalculations of Secession. Miscarriage, as to a " United 

South." And as to a " Divided North." And as to the temper, 
and purpose of the Nation. And as to Expansion, the Slave 
Trade, Free Trade, Boundless Prosperity, Cotton Monopoly. Se- 
cession a frightful and incalculable Mistake. 

VI. The Border Slave States. State of Parties in 18G0. Sudden 
and secret Revolution in Virginia. Probable effects, political and 
military. Western Virginia. Central mountain Route, to the 
central South. Delaware, Maryland, Missouri. The Original 
States — the States carved out of them — the Purchased States. 
Kentucky, her position, peril, temper, purpose. 

VII. General Conclusion. 

I. Civil War. Influence upon it, of the Idea of the Restoration of the Union. 
The American peopk are in the midst of civil war. That ca- 
lamity which, in the just and almost universal judgment of man- 
kind, is the direst which can befall nations, has already covered 
our country with its terrible shadow ; and the gloom thickens 
from day to day, portending a conflict as frightful as it is re- 
pulsive — whose issues are, in many respects, hardly less uncer- 
tain than they may be vast. Hundreds of thousands of armed 



1861.] STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 290 

men are hastening to slay each other — led by captains many of 
whom are worthy to command heroes, and provided with every 
means of mutual destruction Avhich the science and skill of the 
age can devise. Hundreds of millions of dollars have already 
been expended in these immense and fatal preparations : and so 
thoroughly is the most warlike of all races aroused, and so com- 
pletely are the exigencies of the times held to demand of every 
man a complete readiness to defend all that he is not willing to 
surrender, that, at whatever cost, every one capable of bearing 
arms will be armed, and will use his arms with deadly eftect, ac- 
cording as the course of events may seduce or oblige him to do 
so. It is, indeed, possible that some wonderful interposition of 
God, or some sudden and heroic impulse falling upon the people, 
may even yet avert the terrible catastrophe, and arrest the destruc- 
tion even as it is ready to descend. It is equally possible that, 
before these lines are printed, great armies which already face 
each other, may have fought one of those bloody and decisive 
battles, whose issues determine the fate not only of wars, but of 
ages. Ignorant of all the future, and imperfectly informed con- 
cerning passing events, it becomes us to speak with moderation 
and candor of the prospects before us. Penetrated with the 
deepest sorrow at the mournful, though it be in many respects 
sublime, scene which our country presents, we would forbear to 
speak at all, if it were not that the general tenor of what we 
purpose to utter, is designed to keep alive in the hearts of our 
countrymen the conviction that the whole country may, even yet, 
be restored ; and to influence, so far as anything we can do may 
influence, the conduct of all these terrible afl'airs, to that end, and 
by that idea. It is this which is the burden of all we have 
hitherto said and done — it is this which justifies nearly any 
efi"ort, any sacrifice, any sufl'ering, on the part of the nation — it 
is this which we must keep before the minds of men if we would 
preserve our countrymen from turning savages, under the influ- 
ence of the civil war upon which we have entered, and for the 
prosecution of which such enormous preparations are made by 
both parties. 



294 STATE OF THE COUNTRY. [June, 

TI. The long and terrible reign of Parties. Majestic Reappearance of the 
Nation on the scene of Affsiirs. Great Truths accepted, and to be main- 
tained. 

1. For a long course of years political parties, sectional factions, 
and the clamor of demagogues, had given that sort of political 
education to the people, and occupied the thoughts of men with 
that description of political ideas and desires, that the natmi — 
the mighty American Nation — had disappeared from the area of 
our general politics. It had been for a whole generation Whig, 
and Democrat, and Republican, and Know-Nothing, and Seces- 
sionist, and Abolitionist, and Fire-Eater ; the people rent, and 
confused, and maddened — fraud and violence reigning in the 
heated canvasses and elections — and the most shameless corrup- 
tion spreading like a pestilence amongst public men. The glorious 
Nation had disappeared utterly, as the controlling element in 
national affairs ; — so utterly, that a President of the United 
States was found capable of conniving — whether through timid- 
ity, through folly, through imbecility, or through corruption let 
posterity decide — at the ruin of the nationality which his Gov- 
ernment represented, and the overthrow Of the Constitution by 
virtue of which it existed. So utterly, that a revolt openly con- 
ducted in flagrant contempt of the President, the Constitution, 
and the nation, and attended in all its stages by innumerable 
acts of war — was allowed to spread from State to State, without 
the slightest attempt of the nation, or any one representing it, 
to make itself felt or even heard ; until the vast extent of the 
revolt, and the great number of States on which the partizans 
of it had seized, became the chief embarrassment in dealing with 
it at all, and the main plea with timid statesmen why the de- 
graded nation should accept its own destruction, as a fact fully 
accomplished. 

2. That mighty Nation has reappeared once more on the theatre 
of affairs. All thoughtful men knew that such a destruction as 
was attempted, could not be accomplished by war on one side, 
without begetting war on the other side. It may be considered 
madness in the Confederate Government to have preferred the 
bombardment of Fort Sumter, to its peaceable surrender in three 
days, through starvation. But it was a choice precisely in the 
spirit of every act towards the American nation and its Govern- 



1861.] STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 295 

ment, which had characterized the whole previous course of the 
revolt, and which has marked the whole treatment extended to 
Union men in every seceding State, to the present moment. It 
was possible to have divided the American nation peaceably, into 
two or more nations, by the consent of the American people, 
and the change of the Federal Constitution. But it was not, in 
the nature of things, possible to rend it by a military revolt, char- 
acterised by a spirit of contemptuous and reckless violence, alike 
illegal, unjust, and fatal, without arousing the outraged nation, 
and bringing all the mighty questions at issue, to that arbitra- 
ment of arms which the secessionists had chosen — and by which, 
in one form or another of violence, they have achieved every 
conquest they have made. We are not partizans of the present 
National Administration, and have no adequate means of forming 
an opinion, as to whether the particular occasion and moment — 
or whether earlier, or whether later, occasions and times — were 
best suited for armed resistance by it, to the progress of the great 
military revolt, whose avowed objects were the destruction of the 
Government, the overthrow of the Constitution, and the ruin of 
the nation. What we wish to signalize is the majestic reappear- 
ance of the American Nation in the mighty scene — the simulta- 
neous perishing of all factions, and disappearance of all parties 
but the party of the nation, and the party of secession — and the 
unanimous conviction of all American citizens loyal to their coun- 
try, that the National Government is the true and only lawful 
representative of the nation itself. With almost absolute unanim- 
ity the twenty millions of people in the nineteen Northern States ; 
the great majority of the four millions "of white persons in the 
five Border Slave States ; and, as we firmly believe, a very large 
portion of the four millions of white people in the remaining ten 
Slave States, though now cruelly oppressed and silenced, cor- 
dially recognize these great truths, and will maintain them — 
namely, that the American people are a nation — that the Consti- 
tution and laws of the United States are supreme in this nation 
— that the Federal Government is the true and only legal repre- 
sentative of this nation, charged with the defence of its safety, 
the execution of its laws, and the protection of its liberties — in 
the execution of which duties it is bound to repel force by force. 



29B STATE OF THE COUNTRY. [June, 

Nothing can give greater intensity to the facts and principles to 
which the foregoing statements relate, than a comparison of what 
has occurred in all the States Avhich have seceded, with what has 
occurred in all those which have not seceded — touching the means 
by which the revolutionists have gained the mastery and silenced 
opposition in the former, and the manner in which the nation has 
spontaneously roused itself in its own defence in the latter. 

III. Duty of the Nation to loyal citizens in the seceded States. Theii* subjec- 
tion to a Reign of Terror, Alleged unanimity in the seceded States. 

1. Next in importance to the clear apprehension of the duty, 
which every loyal citizen of the nation owes to the National Gov- 
ernment, in this most painful crisis — concerning which we have 
just endeavored to disclose tlie enthusiastic conviction of the nation 
itself; is an equally clear apprehension of the duty which the nation 
owes to loyal citizens in those States in which the revolutionary 
party has gained the ascendency, or in which that party may 
hereafter gain it. This latter question, as far as we know, seems 
not, as yet, to have been fully considered or determined by the 
General Government. The secession party seems to have decided 
it at once, and according to its violent instincts ; and not only 
does their unanimous judgment demand of them exile, death, or 
conversion — but their legal authorities are reputed to be prompt, 
and their ubiquitous committees of vigilance very vehement in 
the execution of a code — nearly as simple and efficacious as that 
of Mahomet himself. There is much reason to believe that the 
actual majority of votes was cast against the secessionists in sev- 
eral States upon which they have seized; that in several others 
held by them, such a majority would have been cast, if an oppor- 
tunity had been allowed ; that in not one of those States has there 
been a true and fair popular ratification of secession ; that before 
the actual commencement of armed resistance on a large scale by 
the Federal Government, the actual majority of the people in the 
Confederate States, taken as a body, was hostile to secession ; and 
that, undeniably, a certain number, and that considerable, of loyal 
citizens, are in every one of those States. Allowing that a state 
of things even tolerably near to that contained in the foregoing 
statement exists — nothing seems to us more clear than that the 



1861.] STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 297 

American people, and by consequence the Federal Government, 
are bound to put forth their utmost strength for the protection of 
American citizens situated as persons loyal to the Union are be- 
lieved to be, in every State that has seceded. Questions of prop- 
erty, questions of rights of various kinds, questions of profit and 
advantage — may be compromised or even gracefully surrendered 
on many occasions. But no Government — no people — no gen- 
tleman — no Christian, can withdraw protection and support from 
those who are bound to them by the most sacred and tender mu- 
tual ties, and leave them to be degraded, oppressed, and perse- 
cuted — without atrocious iniquity and boundless degradation. It 
seems to us that it would be transparently clear, even if nine- 
tenths of the people in every one of the Confederate States, were 
decided secessionists — that they should be required to treat the 
loyal citizens of the United States, found casually amongst them, 
much more those resident amongst them upon the sudden outbreak 
of revolt, with justice and humanity. If, however, it is really 
true that the secessionists are the minority in many of those 
States, upon which they have seized by superior organization, and 
the suddenness and violence of their proceedings ; then, undoubt- 
edly, the duty of the nation is as ol)vious to deliver those States 
from such a despotism, as it would be if their oppressors were 
foreign invaders. In like manner, it is the duty of the General 
Government to furnish all tlio munitions of war to its loyal citi- 
zens residing in States where it is necessary for them to defend, 
by arms, their loyalty to the Union, against armed conspiracies 
seeking to force them into secession. 

2. Peaceable revolutions are made by voting; and the funda- 
mental principle of republican government — which the nation is 
bound by the Constitution to guarantee to every State — is that 
the majority of those entitled to vote — and not an armed faction 
— represents the sovereignty. It would be curious to compare 
the universal contempt for popular rights and institutions, and 
for all the prhiciples and usages of American freedom, which has 
so conspicuously distinguished the career of this secession revolu- 
tion — since the aristocratic minority has got possession of power; 
with the theory of " Concurrent Majorities,'' so carefully elabo- 
rated by their first Apostle, Mr. Calhoun, for the special protec- 



298 STATE OF THE COUNTRY. [June, 

tion of the rights of minorities in free governments. Widely 
different from the principle of Mr. Calhoun's theory, is that now 
reduced to practice in the seceded States, by getting together a 
certain number of persons called a "Convention" — in whom the 
sovereignty of the people is supposed to reside in a permanent and 
manaoreable form ; bodies which in the revolted States have been 
converted into secret, permanent, and irresponsible engines, first 
of revolution, and then of despotism. We do not speak of the 
suppression of such desperate substitutes for republican govern- 
ment ; nor will we stop to point out how fatally such proceedings 
reveal the anarchy from which they take their rise, and the mili- 
tary despotism in the future to which they unerringly point. What 
we have to urge is, the solemn duty of the nation to protect loyal 
minorities, much more loyal majorities, against the ferocious pro- 
ceedings already made manifest under the workings of these in- 
stitutions ; and to warn those yet free from their pitiless grasp, 
to prepare for slavery before they rush into the power of such 
rulers. 

3. Nor is it out of place to remind those who clamor inces- 
santly about the unanimity of the South, and the folly and wicked- 
ness of attempting to resist the settled purpose of a whole people 
who have resolved to leave a Union which they detest ; that the 
nation docs not believe in either the alleged " unanimity," or the 
proclaimed " fixed purpose." Doubtless it is true, that the pecu- 
liar notions of exclusive loyalty to the State we live in, which pre- 
vail extensively in the Southern States — have caused many loyal 
people to submit to the despotism which forced them into seces- 
sion; and State pride, affection for our native land, and many 
other considerations, have swelled the ranks of the army of the 
secessionists, since Avar on a large scale, and imminent peril to their 
cause, suddenly and most unexpectedly met them in their violent 
career. But the American people, in this great crisis of their 
destiny, have solemn duties to perform — and have a right to be 
satisfied that they are truly informed, before they take steps which 
they may never be able to retrace. The American people fervently 
desire the entire restoration of the Union, with the entire consent 
of all the secession States. And they firmly believe that result — 
attended by the total overthrow of the secession faction — would 



1861.] STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 299 

immediately succeed a reaction in the South, not the tenth part as 
great as that which has just occurred in the North — not greater, 
indeed, than the one, in an opposite direction, which has occurred 
throughout the South, within half a year. It is, just now, a ques- 
tion of testimony first, and then of duty founded thereon ; — a ques- 
tion, not between the South and the North ; but between a nation 
of some twenty-six or seven millions, and an active faction, pos- 
sibly under one million, in revolt against it. 

IV. The Seceded Sfaies may return to the Union, or the Secession Party may 
maintain their Revolt by Arms. Tlie War one of Self-Preservation, on 
the Part of the Nation. Not aggressive and against the South — but defen- 
sive and against Secessionists. Supposing the Triumph of the Secession- 
ists ; insuperable Difficulties. Every beueiit contemplated by Secession, 
defeated by the War into which it plunged. Restoration to the Union the 
true Result. 

1. We have already said that the issues of this unnatural war, 
are in many respects as uncertain as they will probably be vast. 
Contingently, however, the most immediate and direct issue of it, 
can have but one, of two results. Either the seceded States must 
return to their loyalty to the nation, and their position as members 
of the United States of America; or the secession party must be 
able to vindicate by arms the course upon which they have entered, 
and, maintaining the independence of as many of the States as 
may finally'adhere to them, those States must be acknowledged 
by the American people and Government as a separate nation. 
Of course, there can be no such result as the conquest of the se- 
ceded States, and the holding them as Provinces or Territories, by 
the Federal Government. Such an attempt is not to be thought 
of as possible — nor to be entertained, for a moment, even if it were 
possible, as a permanent policy — but, beyond all this, even if it 
were politic and easy, it would be even more abhorrent, if pos- 
sible, than secession itself, to the feelings of the American peo- 
ple, and the principles of American liberty. Which of these 
issues will be realized depends, apparently, on the event of the 
war : concerning which we will add something presently, seeing 
the probabilities of that event ought to be a very weighty consid- 
eration with both parties to it. In the meantime let it be observed, 
that the mere statement of the case makes it manifest that the 
war entered upon by the nation, not as one of aggression and con- 



300 STATE OF THE COUNTRY. [June, 

quest, but one of self-defence and self-preservation, can be con- 
ducted only as war upon the secession party and Government — 
and not as war against tlie people of the South ; a war, therefore, 
which would end of itself, upon the overthrow of the secession 
party, and the suppression of the Confederate Government erected 
by that party. 

2. Upon the happening of such an event, which certainly is 
possible, perhaps highly probable, the allegation is that no people 
— no South — would remain to reconstruct society and government, 
and restore the seceded States to their place in the Union. We 
have already spoken of the want of faith in all such extravagant 
statements ; an incredulity fortified by the whole career of the 
revolt, both in its method of usurping power, and its method of 
producing unanimity afterwards ; to which must be added the un- 
deniable proofs existing in public acts and records, in popular 
movements and votes, in numberless private communications, in 
the persecutions lavishly inflicted upon thousands of persons, and 
in the seductions habitually employed against every doubtful, and 
the menaces against every loyal, citizen. What is now passing in 
Tennessee and Virginia, while we write, is full of significance as 
to what might be expected if the army of the secessionists were 
driven out of those States. What happened, months ago, in vari- 
ous Southern States in which that party succeeded in establishing 
their despotism — and what has recently happened in Maryland, 
Missouri, and Kentucky, where their desperate efforts failed — is 
conclusive as to the great fact, that the mass of the community 
every where needed only to have been wisely and bravely led, to 
have conquered what seems to have been, almost every where that 
it existed, a faction of the minority. What made it powerful, was 
its long previous training — its activity and daring at a moment 
of great popular discontent, mortification, and alarm — and the 
fatal connivance of Mr. Buchanan, rendered decisive by the active 
cooperation with the revolt, of those members of his Cabinet whose 
positions had given them special opportunities to promote its organ- 
ization and its first acts. It had, originally, no element of a na- 
tional movement — it has now no aspect of a national revolution. 
And, in our judgment, the moment it encounters signal defeat, a 
counter revolution will set in, that will strip it of all that did not 



1861.] STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 301 

belong to it in its first stages; and under just and wise treatment, 
will eventually restore to the Union every seceded State, not ex- 
cepting South Carolina itself. For ourselves, and we believe in 
this we utter the sentiments of the whole nation, we desire for 
the people in the States now held in armed opposition to the 
National Government, nothing worse than their complete deliver- 
ance from the iron despotism of a disloyal and frantic party, and 
their speedy and complete restoration, in perfect equality and re- 
newed fraternity, to all the glory of our common nationality, and 
all the blessings of our true and regulated freedom. 

3. Supposing we are mistaken in the essential conditions by 
which the foregoing result is to be obtained, there remains only 
the alternative of the triumph of the revolt over the nation, and 
the permanent independence of the seceded States. We do not 
propose to discuss, at this time, the consequences of such a divis- 
ion of the nation — but only to look calmly at some of the most 
obvious difficulties of its accomplishment. And in the very front 
of all these, is the question of the ability of the secession party, 
either to obtain from the consent of the nation, the concession of 
the independence of the Confederate States, or its ability to wrest 
it from the nation by arms. The question of that consent is a 
question of peace, not of war ; a question which the secession 
party disdained even to discuss before they flew to arms ; a ques- 
tion which will, hereafter, depend essentially upon the state of 
the country, and the wishes of the States now under the domin- 
ion of that party, after the war is ended. The great principle on 
which the consent of the nation could, in any circumstances be 
given, is precisely opposite to the great principle on which this 
revolt proceeds — namely, veneration for popular rights and the 
popular will. What view the people of the South may take of 
their rights, and Avhat may be their will touching their erection 
into a separate nation — are questions which may be very greatly 
affected by the progress of events — and the decision of which, 
by themselves, may be very various, according as they are in cir- 
cumstances which allow them to vote and act freely, or, which 
oblige them to vote and act under a ubiquitous military despot- 
ism, administered by armed revolutionary committees of vigilance. 
What is passing now in Virginia and Tennessee — what has passed 



302 STATE OF THE COUNTRY. [June, 

in every State that has already seceded — what was attempted in 
Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri — would not, in all probability, 
be taken — by a great nation loyal to popular rights, and full of 
veneration for free institutions — for such an expression of the pop- 
ular desire and will, on the part of great numbers of its citizens, 
as would challenge its consent to its own dismemberment. It is 
not to be disguised, however, that even under the most favorable 
aspect in which the subject of the peaceable division of the nation 
could be presented, there are obstacles in the way of its accom- 
plishment which nothing but the highest and noblest convictions 
of mutual obligations, united with the profoundest sense of mutual 
forbearance, accommodation, and good will — could surmount. 
In the present state of the country, it is superfluous to discuss 
these obstacles. And in the degree that independence, by what- 
ever means, as the only alternative to restoration to the Union, 
is environed with difficulties ; is the madness of the secession 
movement manifest, and the duty of the nation to suppress it 
clear. 

4. It seems to remain, then, that the solitary result of the war, 
is the restoration of the seceded States to the Union, or the tri- 
umph of the arms of the secessionists over the nation. The more 
completely this great truth is fixed in the minds of all parties, the 
better for all. The more thoroughly the nation understands that 
it is fighting neither for vengeance nor for conquest, but directly 
for self-preservation — and remotely for the maintenance of its 
independence in the face of all other nations, and for its future 
peace, security, and advancement in the glorious career now 
threatened to be cut short ; the more it will be disposed to pros- 
ecute the war forced upon it, in the manner which becomes such 
a people, driven into such a conflict. And the more completely 
those who are in arms against the nation realize, that what they 
seek is, probably, not attainable ; and the more clearly the States 
and people now seduced or terrified into a revolt so unnatural, 
understand that the suppression of that revolt means, not their 
degradation, but their restoration to all that was won by the valor, 
and confirmed by the wisdom of their ancestors ; the more certain 
will be the cure of their present frenzy — the more rapid their 
deliverance from the delusions under which they have erred ex- 



1861.] BTATE OF THE COUNTRY. 303 

ceedingly — and the more thorough their overthrow of the faction 
now leading them to destruction. 

5. To all human appearance, the establishment of the independ- 
ence of the Confederate States by the present war, is impossible. 
How much blood may be shed, how much treasure may be squan- 
dered, how much suffering may be inflicted, how much ruin, in 
ten thousand ways, may be brought upon millions of people, and 
how near to the brink of destruction the country may be braught — 
can now be known only to the Ruler of the Universe. But so far 
as any object avowed, or even conceivable, which ever was, or 
can be, proposed as a benefit to the Southern States, was expected 
to be promoted by secession ; this war renders that object unat- 
tainable. We do not propose to enter into discussions from a 
mihtary point of view, nor do we underrate the difficulties of every 
kind, which the General Government has to encounter. But it 
seems to us perfectly inevitable, that without the special interpo- 
sition of God for the destruction of this great nation, the certainty 
is complete — that the independence of the Confederate States 
cannot be established as the result of this war. In the degree 
that this judgment may be supposed to be just, two conclusions, 
both of them of great weight, follow. The first is, the wicked- 
ness and folly not only of the revolt itself, but of the whole spirit 
and method in which it has been prosecuted; the second is the 
certainty that the fact itself, in proportion as it becomes manifest, 
must weaken, throughout the whole South, the purpose to prose- 
eeute a conflict so ruinous and so bootless. No doubt there are 
wars which may be prosecuted to the last extremity; and, no 
doubt, many thousands of secessionists may have persuaded them- 
selves that this is such a war, or may have so deeply wrecked all 
other hopes that only this desperate stake is left to them. But 
the dictates of reason and morality — the judgment of mankind — 
and the irreversible decree of posterity, is different here. This 
is a revolt, whose complete success would not have justified the 
war into which it has plunged a great country ; and, therefore, 
the certainty of its failure robs its continuance of all pretext. 
And such, at no distant period, may be expected to be the judg- 
ment of the great mass of the Southern people ; and, by conse- 
quence, their peaceful and cordial return to their loyalty, and to 



304 STATE OF THE COUNTRY. [June, 

the exercise of all their rights as citizens of the United States — 
instead of being a preposterous dream — is not only the most prob- 
able, but apparently the certain result, of a wise and courageous 
treatment of aifairs. 

V. Miscalculations of Secession. Miscarriage as to a " United South." And as 
to a " Divided North." And as to the temper, and purpose of the Nation. 
And as to Expansion, the Slave trade, Free trade, Boundless Prosperity, 
Cotton Monopoly. Secession a frightful and incalculable mistake. 

1. If we consider for a moment the signal miscarriage of all 
the permanent objects of the secessionists, and the strange mis- 
calculations, and absurd pretensions upon Avhich their hopes of 
ultimate success rested ; it ^yill diminish, on one hand, all distrust 
of the grounds on which their hopes of establishing their inde- 
pendence by terrifying the nation into consent, or conquering it 
by arms, have been shown to be futile ; and will augment, on the 
other hand, the just confidence of the nation that it is mas- 
ter of the situation ; and augment, also, the confidence with which 
every man in the South, whether loyal or disloyal, ought to con- 
template the disastrous end of this revolt, as inevitable. To suc- 
ceed in establishing, by force, the independence of the South — 
using that word in its large sense, as embracing all the Slave 
States — necessarily involved, as the very first condition, the 
unanimity of the whole South in the movement. Instead of this, 
such a line of conduct was adopted, as made the action of every 
Southern State isolated; and this policy was pursued in such a 
manner, as to make a resort to violence necessary in securing 
unanimity in any State — and as to make the principles of des- 
potism supplant the principles of freedom, in every State. The 
seeds of utter defeat were thickly sown in the first open move- 
ment of the conspiracy. To-day, instead of a completely united, 
there is a thoroughly divided South. And we feel perfectly sat- 
isfied, that if every arm was removed from the fifteen Slave 
States, and every man in them all w^as allowed freely to choose 
his side — and then the whole population was equally and com- 
pletely armed, and the question fought out ; the result would be 
the suppression of the revolt. Born of Southern parents, in a 
Southern State — never having owed or professed allegiance to 
any other government than that of the United States, and that 



1861.] STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 305 

of the Commonwealth of Kentucky — never having even resided, 
during a life far from short, except temporarily and for brief 
periods, out of the South — and having been obliged by our 
course of life to acquire a large acquaintance with the people, 
the institutions, and the interests of the South ; the opinion we 
have expressed may be fairly weighed against a large amount 
of clamor. It would, we are convinced, be vouched as true and 
sound, on the conditions stated, by more than half a million of 
Southern men — ready upon fair occasion, and if need required, 
to uphold it with their lives, 

2. Again, the second imperativ^e necessity, preliminary to any 
flagrant proceedings by force, was the absolute certainty that the 
pretensions of the South would be supported, at least by opinion, 
in the twenty States of the North, in such a way as to divide 
and weaken all concerted movements, designed to precipitate the 
overwhelming force of twenty millions of people, upon eight mil- 
lions — if the whole South was united — with four millions of 
slaves scattered amongst them ; concerning the freedom or the 
servitude of which slaves, the revolutionists professed that the 
chief cause of the war lay. Instead of that, the unanimity of the 
North proved, from the start, to be complete, and its enthusiasm 
so great, that a brief proclamation of the President, after the 
bombardment at Charleston, called three or four hundred thou- 
sand volunteers to the standard of the nation ; a single State, 
( Ohio ) offering more men than were demanded for the whole na- 
tion. With these two facts, nothing can be more obvious, than 
the utter incompetency or the desperate recklessness, of those 
who precipitated their followers into a conflict as unequal as it 
was wicked — and did this with boastings and revilings as un- 
seemly as they were unfounded. 

3. Again, no delusion was ever more complete than that into 
which the leaders of the secession party fell and slept, during 
their long conspiracy of thirty years, of the true character, 
and actual position and temper of the American people, and 
of the force of the power they had themselves accumulated, 
and the value of the preparation they had made for the set- 
ting of a great nation at defiance. They had talked treason 
so long together, that they seemed to consider it a power of 

VOL. I. — NO. 2. 9 



306 STATE OF THE COUNTRY. [June, 

itself, and all patriotism extinct. The national treasury made 
bankrupt, the small army put totally out of reach, and the arms 
of the nation diligently stored where they could be seized — the 
little navy laid up, or scattered in different seas — the unhappy 
President deluded, seduced, or terrified — and a secret band of 
sworn allies made up of desperate adventurers, disloyal soldiers, 
and corrupt politicians scattered over the nation ; these, as far 
as the public are yet informed, seem to have been the original 
implements which were deemed adequate for the first start of a 
military revolution, whose object was the dismemberment of one 
of the greatest of existing nations of the most warlike people, 
with the finest and firmest nationality in the world. Their sub- 
sequent success — founded upon a temporary phrenzy in the pub- 
lic mind, and upon the military ardor of the Southern people, 
their devotion to their domestic institutions, and their personal and 
State pride — may be allowed to redeem, in some degree, the 
miscalculated force of the conspiracy, from utter contempt. It 
is not, however, to the force or foresight of the conspiracy, but 
it is to the disordered and peiulous state of the country, itself 
due to causes which we have developed in publications hitherto 
recently made; that the great political and military movements 
throughout the larger portion of the South, subsequent to the 
inaugura,tion of Mr. Lincoln, are to be attributed. These move- 
ments — in many points of view most deplorable, in many others 
illustrative of noble. traits of character of the Southern people, 
and which have given to the secession cause most of its strength 
and all its dignity — even if they could have been foreseen as one 
element of the future, are the farthest possible from excusing the 
revolt. For great as they may be, and unworthy as tJie cause 
of secession may be of them — their inadequacy to achieve the 
objects proposed by the war, is none the less certain ; an inade- 
quacy founded in the nature of things, and which wise leaders 
would have foreseen, and generous leaders would not have sacri- 
ficed. 

4. When we turn our thoughts towards topics more remote 
than those hitherto considered, they all appear to conspire to 
the same result — the entire defeat of every permanent object 
proposed to be gained by the secession war. If the whole of the 



1861.] STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 307 

Slave States were united, as the result of this war, in a separate 
Confederacy — all the ideas of the future expansion of the new 
nation, which have occupied so large a space in the thoughts of 
men, might be surrendered at once. One year would not elapse, 
in all probability, before an alliance of all nations interested in 
the vast and increasing commerce which must pass across the 
isthmus of Panama, and amongst the islands of the Caribbean sea, 
and across the waters of the Gulf of Mexico ; would effectually 
close the question of expansion, for the Confederate States. In 
like manner, the question of the Slave Trade, to the free prosecu- 
tion of which so much importance continues to be attached, in the 
most earnest of the seceded States ; may be considered definitive- 
ly at an end, let this revolt terminate as it may. In like manner, 
the doctrine of Free Trade, in favor of which the doctrine of 
secession took its rise in South Carolina, and which has been 
continually and conspicuously held forth as one of the priceless 
blessings to be secured by the revolt ; is utterly subverted by one 
of the earliest acts of the Confederate Congress, imposing a duty 
on exports — a form of obstructing commerce forbidden by the 
Federal Constitution. And the boasted career of incalculable 
wealth v/hicli secession promised to inaugurate — in the first year 
of its existence is signalized by the charity of the people of 
Illinois sending corn free of charge, to the starving poor of Mis- 
sissippi ; while, if the war shall continue till the Confederate 
States conquer the United States, their first year of peace will 
exhibit the heaviest ratable public debt, perhaps, in the world, 
and the most burdensome taxation ever borne by an agricultural 
people ; and a bankruptcy as absolute as the golden dreams of 
secession were preposterous. To make but one suggestion more, 
it would, perhaps, have been impossible for any madness less 
destructive than this secession war, to have seriously disturbed 
for a century to come, the near approach which the South was 
making to the most productive and extensive monopoly, ever 
possessed by any people in the products of the earth — in its 
growing control of the cotton market of the world. At present, 
so imminent is the peril into which this boundless source of wealth 
has been brought, not only for a few seasons, but it may be in 
permanence — that the armed intervention of the great mari- 



308 STATE OF THE COUNTRY. [June, 

time and manufacturing nations of the world, for the deliverance 
and protection of the cotton of the Confederate States, is amongst 
the desperate hopes to which their situation gives expression. 

5- Now it does appear to us, that these statements reveal prin- 
ciples and facts of supreme significance, all pointing in the same 
direction, and challenging profound consideration. They appear 
to prove, that secession, iu its origin, its progress, its present 
condition, and its terrible future — is a blunder, a failure, a fright- 
ful and incalculable mistake, founded upon every sort of error 
and miscalculation. It is in that view of them, and of their 
teachings, that we have arrayed them. Allowing whatever may 
be thought necessary for our mistake, for our want of full knowl- 
edge, even for our supposed prejudice or want of candor, enough 
remains to indicate, what we have so earnestly insisted on, that 
the complete restoration of the Union, is not only a glorious 
event within our reach — which it is the highest duty and inter- 
est, both of the nation and of the seceded States, to accept and 
act upon ; but that the ordinary course of the immense and terri- 
ble affairs noAV passing before our eyes, leads, though it may be 
through frightful sufferings, towards that result. Would to God, 
it might have been in peace, and by reason and love, that the 
country had been saved ! Thanks be to God, for a refuge to all 
parties, such as seems to us to be set before them all, when these 
calamities are overpassed ! For the blood that is shed, and the 
crimes that are committed — let them who are responsible an- 
swer to God ! 

VI. The Border Slave States. State of parties in 1860. Sudden and secret 
Revolution in Virginia. Probable effects, political and inilitarj'. Western 
Virginia. Central mountain Route to the central South. Delaware, Mary- 
land, Missouri. The original States — the States carved out of them — 
the purchased States. Kentucky, her position, peril, temper, purpose. 

1. At the start, this secession movement was exclusively confined 
to the disciples of Mr. Calhoun — and they, having their chief 
seat in South Carolina, and schools rather than parties in the 
upper Slave States, did not hold the controlling power even in 
1860, in one half of the Cotton States. By degrees, the Demo- 
cratic party of the South had become imbued, under the abused 
name of " State Rights," with the doctrines of free trade, of the 



1861.] STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 

increase and extension of slavery, and of secession : and the 'dis- 
ruption of that party at Charleston and Baltimore, as far as the 
public are now informed, was in the interest of these new ideas, 
and of those old disciples of Mr, Calhoun. The parties, in the 
fifteen Slave States, which supported Mr. Bell and Mr. Douglass 
for the Presidency in 1860, could, if they had united, have carried 
nearly all those States — and, for the time, have put down seces- 
sion. If the Whig Convention, at Baltimore, had nominated 
Gen. Houston, instead of Mr. Bell, this result would probably 
have followed. It is, in effect, the want of ability, or the want 
of patriotism, in the leaders of parties in the Slave States in 1860, 
to which a very large part of the present danger of the nation is 
to be attributed. In the mean time, the Democratic party had 
already, before 1860, acquired the predominance in all the Slave 
States, and when the secession party took up arms against the 
National Government, the political and military power of all those 
States was in the hands of that party. The election of Mr. Lin- 
coln, which produced such a shock throughout the Slave States, 
afforded the opportunity of creating a powerful agitation, upon 
the extreme pro-slavery aspect of secession ; and it was used 
with so little scruple and so great diligence, that to be loyal to 
the Union, and to be an abolitionist, have come to mean the same 
thing in the vocabulary of secessionists ; and organized political 
fanatics and ruffians, wherever they are not repressed by the fear 
of effectual resistance, have, under that pretext, initiated a reign 
of terror. The common predominance of the Democratic party, 
and the universal existence of the institution of slavery in all 
those States, were the bonds of union amongst them all, whereby 
those who meditated revolt expected and sought to carry them 
all for secession : the latter fact affording the secessionists the 
most powerful means of inflaming the passions of men, and the 
former fact providing the power to coerce such as could not be 
seduced. So far as the five Border Slave States were concerned, 
of which we have now to speak particularly, (Delaware, Mary- 
land, Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri ) the presidential election 
of 1860 broke the back of this scheme, by breaking, in those five 
States, the power of the party which supported Major Breckin- 
ridge for the Presidency. The other part of the scheme of the 



310 STATE OP THE COUNTRY. [June, 

secessionistSj encountered, in those five States, obstacles which 
proved to be extremely serious. In the first place, the loyalty 
of the people was far more stubborn than had been expected, 
and the peril of attempting to coerce them into disloyalty far 
more grave than had been encountered elsewhere. In the second 
place, the institution of slavery, in those States, stood in a posi ■ 
tion, and the people occupied toward it a relation, widely diifer- 
ent from the corresponding facts in the Cotton States ; and the 
people, satisfied with the matter as it stood, saw nothing but peril 
in the remedy offered by secession. In the third place, the geo- 
graphical position of those States gave them immense weight 
while peace could be maintained, and made them the theatre of 
the war, which every one could see the secessionists were making 
inevitable ; so that every consideration of wisdom, patriotism and 
self-respect, admonished them to maintain, inviolably, their posi- 
tion as citizens of the United States. 

2. Such, briefly, was the nature of the situation, generally con- 
sidered, in the five Border Slave States ; which contain more white 
inhabitants, and military resources, than the remaining ten Slave 
States. If these five States had stood firm, the fate of secession 
was sealed. The war must have been short, as the speedy and 
complete restoration of the Union certain. The sudden, secret, 
and deplorable revolution created in Virginia by a Convention, 
pledged to the great majority of the people who had elected them, 
and expressly bound, by the law which created the body, to take 
a widely different course ; necessarily changed, in many respects, 
the posture of events, and the nature and course of the war. It 
cannot, in our judgment, as we have shown, change the final result. 
It will inflict incalculable injury upon Virginia herself — and must, 
so far as she is concerned, end in the division of the common- 
wealth, or in radical changes in the nature of her government, 
and in her internal policy. As we understand the matter, the 
popular representation rests on a mixed and arbitrary basis of 
land, slaves, and voters, distributing representation by great sec- 
tions of the State, and then by counties, and towns perhaps, in 
those sections respectively ; the general result being, that the 
great central section of the State is unequally represented as 
compared with the eastern section, and the still greater western 



1861.] STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 311 

section still more unequally as compared with both the others 
The government, thus permanently thrown into the hands of a 
minority of the people occupying the eastern and southern sec- 
tions of the State, has been long considered disregardful of the 
ordinary rights and interests ^f the subject majority, occupying 
the western and northern sections of the State. A permanent and 
flagrant instance of this chronic injustice, is an unequal system 
of taxation, so framed as to relieve the immense aggregate wealth, 
in the form of slaves, held by the ruling minority, in large part 
from any tax at all, and as to the remainder, from a large part 
of the property tax, by fixing a low and arbitrary value on slaves, 
by act of Assembly. Another instance of the same sort is 
alleged to exist, in the systematic injustice with which the rev- 
enue thus fraudulently raised, is spent entirely in the interest of 
the same i-uling minority, with complete disregard of the special 
interests of the heavily taxed majority. The Convention which 
voted, in secret session, the ordinance of secession, with a mob of 
secession ruffians, as is alleged, clamoring at their reluctant obedi- 
ence to its behests ; passed, also, and submitted with that ordinance, 
to the people for ratification, an act proposing to concede some- 
thing concerning this slave taxation. Even this concession, wrung 
by the necessity of the occasion — was characteristic of the rul- 
ing spirit; the great revolution, though submitted to the idle form 
of a popular vote, under the eyes of fifty thousandsarmed seces- 
sionists — being made effectual and executed at once, as if already 
approved by the people; the little act of concession, being made 
ineffectual, till ratified by the popular vote. This statement, neces- 
sary to the full understanding of the case between Eastern and 
Western Virginia, makes it all the more probable that the move- 
ment in the latter against secession, and against the dominant 
minority in the former, will have consequences at once permanent 
and important; all bearing directly against the efficacy of the 
revolutionary action of Eastern Virginia, and of the late Conven- 
tion. 

3. Not the least important of the consequences involved in the 
state of affairs we have been disclosing, is that a perfectly prac- 
ticable military route is thus opened through the heart of the 
most loyal population of the whole South, into the very heart of 



312 STATE OF THE COUNTRY. [June, 

the inland secession country ; whereby the General Government 
may lead an army for the protection of loyal citizens in the back 
parts of Georgia and both the Carolinas on the left hand, in North- 
ern Mississippi and Alabama in front, and in West Tennessee on 
the right. The mountain region which covers Western Virginia 
and Eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, penetrates into Georgia, 
Alabama, and North and South Carolina. Two hundred miles wide 
from east to west, and double as long from north to south, the long 
valleys of this remarkable region, flanked everywhere by moun- 
tain ranges, run precisely in the direction that an army for pro- 
tection of loyal jitizens of the South should take. A march of 
ten or fifteen days from the Ohio river, through Western Virginia, 
would place a force in the mountains of East Tennessee, cutting 
the line of the railroad which connects the Atlantic ocean with 
the Mississippi river at Memphis. The effects of such a forward 
movement, invited by the conduct of Virginia, and indicated by 
the highest military and political considerations — would be imme* 
diatc and decisive, if sustained by an adequate force, under an 
able commander. And our persecuted brethren in East Tennes- 
see, Northern Alabama, and the back parts of Georgia and the 
Carolinas, may see — in the hints that we have ventured to throw 
out — that they are not out of the reach of succor. We believe 
that ten thousand volunteers from the mountains of Kentucky, 
would follow Robert Anderson in such an expedition, for such 
an object; and it may be confidently added, ten thousand more 
from Western Virginia, and ten thousand who would join them 
in East Tennessee. No portion of America had less motive to 
betray herself than Virginia had ; none could ever put more at 
stake, by one act of, what seems to us, suicidal folly, than she 
has done. Renowned and venerated name! — well do we know 
that many of your heroic sons will die for you, on the mere point 
of honor, even though they blush at what you have done ! They 
will die in vain ; neither maintaining what you have decreed, nor 
wiping out its stain! 

4. The posture of Delaware and Maryland may be considered 
definitively settled, and, as to the result, essentially the same, in 
many respects ; and that of Missouri is so analagous to that of 
Maryland, that we need not separate it from them, in the few 



1861.] STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 318 

remarks it is necessary to make. Delaware casts in her lot, with 
a prompt movement and a loyal heart, with the nation of which 
she is so small but so true a part. The relation of Delaware to 
Maryland is geographically such, that it seems a great marvel 
that both of them should, in times like these, apparently over- 
look the great mutual importance of their forming the closest 
bonds with each other. Maryland looked to Virginia for guid- 
ance — when she and Delaware united were really more import- 
ant to the Federal Government, than Virginia was ; and far more 
entitled, in the circumstances, to give the lead than to follow Vir- 
ginia. Her great peril before the late revolt in Baltimore, was 
her want of preparation, watchfulness, and self-reliance ; which, 
but for the wise, forbearing, and firm conduct of the General Gov- 
ernment, would have cost her dear. Her great peril now is, from 
the seductions of Virginia, and the machinations of her own dis- 
loyal sons. As to her destiny — no discussion can make it any 
plainer than it is already, to every one who will reflect upon her 
whole position. As long as the Federal Government exists, and 
Washington is the capital of the American nation, Maryland is 
an indispensable portion of that nation ; and as such, has before 
her a boundless career of prosperity, freedom, and honor. In her, 
disloyalty to the nation is not only wickedness — it is folly. The 
same general state of case, though for reasons in some respects 
different, exists with regard to Missouri. If the country west of 
Missouri is to remain a portion of the nation, it is impossible for 
the nation to allow that State to separate from it. If the South 
is to become a separate nation, it is equally impossible for the 
United States to give up the military position — one of the 
strongest in the world — covered by the mouths of the Ohio and 
Missouri rivers. The position of Missouri is central, and un- 
speakably powerful and important, as a member of the Federal 
Union ; and there is no degree of wealth, power, and influence, 
to which she may not attain, if the Union is maintained. So that 
her own interest, in every conceivable way, points to the same 
great career, which the absolute necessities of the nation will se- 
cure for her, if she continues loyal to it. To us, we admit, this 
whole aff'airof secession has been an enigma, in this — that all the 
reasons and pretexts, alleged as a justification, or even an excuse 



314 STATE OF THE COUNTRY. [June, 

for the course which the revolt has taken, have appeared to us 
so totally disproportioned to the conduct they professed to explain ; 
that we have felt as if there must be other grounds, as yet concealed 
from the public, upon which men of sense and honor pursued a 
line of conduct, apparently so monstrous, as compared Avith all 
the known defences of it. We regret to say that the secession- 
ists in Missouri, and we must add, though perhaps in a less degree, 
in Maryland, appear to be signally amenable to this charge, 
whether we consider what it was they attempted — or the means 
which they resorted to — or the manner in which they quailed, 
when it became necessary to assume the responsibility of what 
they had done — or the machinations they have kept up, since 
their conspiracy in both those States w^as defeated. It is clear 
to us that the million and a half, or upwards, of white inhabit- 
ants, in Delaware, Maryland, and Missouri, must be counted out 
— whenever the strength of secession is summed up. And we 
will now proceed to show that the million in Kentucky must also 
be deducted. 

5. There are very high senses in which all the States are equal, 
both in fact, and in the contemplation of the Federal Constitution. 
Nevertheless, there are circumstances connected with the past 
history, and indeed with the origin, of all the States, that seem 
to place them in positions by no means identical — touching the 
"State Rights," and the corresponding "National Rights," which 
enter so largely into the difficulties produced by secession. We 
have, in a former publication, attempted to show that a National 
Government and State Governments united into one political sys- 
tem, is the original, continuous, exclusive, and perpetual form of 
government chosen by the American people since ever they were 
a nation, and by all the commonwealths composing that nation 
since ever they were States ; and we have attempted, after estab- 
lishing this controlling truth, to show its bearing upon secession, 
in various points of view. What we have to say now is, that at 
the bar of reason and conscience, there is a difference touching 
the rights claimed, as to secession, between the original thirteen 
States, and the twenty-one States added since ; and that there is 
a difference, again, between those out of tlicse twenty-one added 
States, which were acquired by conquest, treaty, or purchase, 



1861.] STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 315 

and those which were created out of portions of the first thirteen 
States. The plea of Virginia or North Carolina, for example, 
might have a certain aspect entitling it to grave consideration ; 
while the plea, for example, of Louisiana, Texas, and Florida, 
might provoke only derision ; while the plea, for example, of Ten- 
nessee to have the benefit of the Repeal Ordinance of her mother 
North Carolina, might appear to be nearer, in equity, to the first 
than to the second of the tAvo other classes. Our judgment is 
against the validity of the very highest of these pleas ; and the 
lowest of them seem to us monstrous, in every point of view. 
Considering the past history of the case of Louisiana, for exam- 
ple, her recent conduct, so far from being founded in justice, is 
even destitute of a decent regard for appearances. 

6. The position of Kentucky, the only remaining Border Slave 
State, is historically at the head of the class of new States carved 
out of old ones. From her birth as the first State added, nearly 
seventy years ago, to the original thirteen, her whole career has 
been marked by the noble quaUties of Virginia, at that period, 
and before, and long after, and which shone, with peculiar luster, 
in the founders of the young commonwealth. And we confident- 
ly predict, that let Virginia falter and fall, as she may, her 
daughter will maintain her loyalty to the good, and will reject 
the evil, in her example. Behold an example and a proof: Vir- 
ginia asked her to meet her in counsel to preserve the Union ; 
meantime, Virginia suddenly detel-mined, before the appointed 
day of counsel, to destroy the L^nion. Kentucky having accepted 
the former counsel and invitation, went on totally regardless 
of the subsequent madness — elected her commissioners without 
opposition, and by the largest popular vote she ever gave to any 
proposition — and kept the appointed day. There is, in fact, but 
one internal peril hanging over Kentucky, The executive 
power of the State, and the command of her military force, is in 
the hands of a Governor — having yet two years to serve — who 
is totally out of sympathy with the great mass of the people, 
and who has used the influence of his ofiice, and all its power, in 
a direction, and towards an end, hateful to the bulk of those 
whose Governor he is. If Mr. Magofiin was a loyal Union man, 
the whole internal difficulty of Kentucky would terminate in a 



816 STATE OP THE COUNTRY. [June, 

week; unless the secession minority should be mad enough to 
take up arms, and call in Confederate troops ; in which case, of 
course, unless Kentucky should instantly suppress them, she 
would become one of the theatres of the war. That event may 
happen. It is believed by many to be highly probable, under 
present circumstances. Situated as the State is, it is a contin- 
gency which is constantly impending ; and to meet which, if it 
should happen, there is no way but by arms. The very plainest 
duty of the Union men of Kentucky, therefore, for months past, 
has been t^ arm and organize themselves, to the very last man, 
and in the most effectual manner, and in the shortest possible 
time. We desire, from the bottom of our heart, that Governor 
Magoffin, and the party with which he acts, may be content to 
guide their conduct by law, and in obedience to the known will 
of the people of Kentucky ; and that by so doing, he may keep 
the calamities of war from desolating the State. But if he and 
his party will not do this, or cannot do it — upon both of which 
points there is deep and wide distrust in the public mind — then 
he and they must take the responsibihty of all that may follow. 
And he and they both well know, that the people of Kentucky 
will not submit to the despotism of the Confederate States — 
will not allow of a reign of terror — will not tolerate revolution- 
ary committees — will not tamely submit to injuries, insults, op- 
pressions, or usurpations of any kind — and will not give up their 
loyalty to the American nation, or their place in the American 
Union. The mass of the people of Kentucky sincerely desire the 
restoration of the entire Union ; they strongly disapprove of the 
whole course of the secessionists from the beginning ; they beUeve, 
at the same time, that the whole South has had great cause of 
dissatisfaction — and they do not feel free to take part in the war 
against the Confederate States : nor will they take part against 
the Federal Government, which, however they may disapprove of 
it, or its acts, they recognize as the representative of the nation 
of which they are a loyal part, and the chief executive author- 
ity under that Constitution which is the supreme law. What they 
desire and propose, therefore, is to take no part in this war ; and 
by this means, they intend — in the first place, to express the true 
state of their feelings ; in the second place, to occupy a position in 



1861.] STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 317 

which, as a mediator, they may, as soon and as often as occasion 
offers, do all in their power to restore peace and Union, if that be 
possible; and in the third place, to preserve themselves and their 
State from the horrors of a conflict which they did all they could 
to prevent, which they cannot engage in with a good will, and 
which, in the divided state of opinion amongst her people, and 
by reason of her geographical position, would probably be ruin- 
ous to the State, by means of her becoming actively engaged in 
it. 

7. Such we believe to be the existing state of opinion and 
affairs in Kentucky. With regard to it, we will make but two 
general remarks. The first is, that in our judgment, the state 
of opinion in Kentucky is chiefly characterized by the public mind 
being torn by conflicting principles and passions, often working 
even in the same mind, in opposite directions, — and, as the gen- 
eral result, begetting a decided popular reluctance to any violent 
measures, or any extreme courses, or any irrecoverable step ; but 
that the tendency of opinion has been constant and rapid, in 
favor of the Union ; and that, at every period, and especially at 
present, the number of persons who would vote to take Kentucky 
out of the Union, is a comparatively small portion of the peo- 
ple — made dangerous by their violence, their activity, their or- 
ganization, their being extensively armed, their good understand- 
ing with the secession leaders and military ofiicers, and their 
sympathy with the chief executive and military authorities in the 
Commonwealth. The second remark we have to make is, that 
the same wise and lofty forbearance manifested by the general 
Government towards Maryland, and we will add towards Mis- 
souri — will be manifested, there is every reason to believe, to- 
wards Kentucky, in the high but unusual position she has felt it 
to be her duty to assume. In the case of Kentucky — and we 
may add Missouri — this conduct of the President, which those 
States certainly should applaud, and which would give them peace 
at once, if it were imitated by the Confederate Government, is 
extremely significant ; as it seems to indicate that, in his opinion, 
the neutral and yet loyal position of these two great central 
States, may, in certain highly probable events of the war, be 
turned to great advantage, in that complete restoration of the 



318 STATE OF THE COUNTRY. [June, 

Union, which the loyal citizens of both of those States ardently 
desire. 

VII. General Conclusion. 

There remain many topics of great importance and signifi- 
cance, concerning which we have said nothing. And yet the 
number and the magnitude of those we have attempted to eluci- 
date, compared with the narrowness of the space they occupy, 
might indicate that our error may rather be in attempting too 
much, than in not attempting more. The whole subject is one, 
of which we never think seriously, without profound astonishment 
and anguish ; about which we have never written a line without 
attempting to exercise the severest rectitude, as if we were speak- 
ing in the face of another generation. This civil war is a terri- 
ble portent. All civilized nations regard it with horror ; and 
posterity will be obliged to pronounce it an inconceivable out- 
rage upon the freedom, the morality, and the civilization of the 
present age. To what ends God, in his adorable Providence, has 
allowed it, and will conduct it, and use it — it behooves every one, 
who acknowledges there is a God, to ponder deeply — and every 
one, who professes to serve God, to search diligently. 

A few great truths seem to us transparently clear — and 
amongst them not one is more impressive, at the present moment, 
than that which we have attempted to illustrate in this paper. 
The American Nation ought to be preserved, and the American 
Union ought to be restored. This war ought to be conducted by 
the Nation — under the impression of that solemn necessity — 
which, as far as we can judge, is shown to be attainable, alike 
by the indications of Divine Providence, and by all the circum- 
stances upon Avhich enlightened human judgments can be formed. 
If in these things we err, nothing will remain, but for the nation 
to bow its august head reverently before the known will of God, 
and the irresistible force of destiny. It has already redeemed it- 
self from the ignominious fate to which the last Federal Adminis- 
tration had consigned it. Let its destruction bear some just pro- 
portion to the glory of its past life. 



1861.] DISCOURSE OF DR. BRECKINRIDGE. 319 

DISCOURSE 

OS- 

DR. R. J. BRECKIIEIDCiE, 

DELIVERED 0>f THE DAY OF 

NATIONAL HUMILIATION, 

JANUARY 4, 1861, 
AT LEXIISTG-TON, KY. 



It is in circumstances, my friends, of terrible solemnity, that 
this great nation presents herself in an attitude of humiliation 
before the Lord God of Hosts ; in circumstances of great 
solemnity, that she stands before the bar of all surrounding 
nations, under that universal public opinion which gives fame 
or stamps with infamy ; and hardly less solemn than both, is 
her attitude at the bar of distant ages and especially our own 
posterity, that awful tribunal whose decrees can be reversed 
only by the decree of God. It is the first of these three 
aspects, either passing by in silence or touching very slightly 
the other two, that I am to consider before you now. And 
what I shall chiefly attempt to show is, that om- duties can 
never be made subordinate to our passions without involving 
us in ruin, and that our rights can never be set above our 
mterests without destroying both. 

In taking this direction, let us bear in mind that the pro- 
clamation of the Chief JVIagistate of the Republic which calls 
as to this service, asserts, in the first place, that ruin is 
impending over om- national institutions ; and asserts, in the 
second place, that so far as appears to him no human resources 
remain that are adequate to save them; and, in the third 
place, that the whole nation, according to his judgment, ought 



320 DISCOTJKSE OF DR. BRECKINRIDGE. [June, 

to prostrate itself before God and cry to him for deliverance. 
— Upon this I have to say, in the great name of God, and by 
the authority of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world, these 
two things : Flrst^ that national judgments never come 
except by reason of national sins ; nor are they ever turned 
aside except upon condition of repentance for the sins which 
produced them : and, Secondly^ that repentance for sin, as it 
is the absolute and universal, so it is the infallible condition 
of divine pardon and acceptance, not only in the case of in- 
dividuals, but more obviously still and more immediately in 
the case of nations, since nations, as such, have no existence 
in a future life. Wherefore, if we are in the way of fearful 
evils, we are also in the way of clear duty, and therein we 
may hope for assured deliverance in the degree, first, that 
every one will go before another in earnest endeavors to 
rectify in himself all that is abominable to God ; and, 
secondly, that every one will evince towards others the for- 
bearance which he desires that God should extend towards 
him. Wlierefore, also, we may boldly say that the remedy 
from God to us need not be expected to manifest itself by 
means of political parties, or by means of combinations of 
political leaders, or by means of new political compacts, or 
by means of additional legal enactments, or by means of more 
explicit constitutional provisions ; but that it must come from 
God to us, and be made manifest through a profound move- 
ment in the source of all power in free governments, namely, 
first, in the hearts of individuals, men turning from their 
sins, their follies, and their madness ; and, secondly, in the 
uprising of an irresistible impulse thus created, which over 
the length and breadth of the land shall array itself in the 
power of God, against every endeavor to bring upon us the 
evils which we are imploring God to avert. 

The first and greatest of these evils that we beseech God 
to avert, and that we should strive with all our might to 
prevent, is the annihilation of the nation itself, by tearing it 
into fragments. Men may talk of rights perpetually and out- 



1861.] DISCOURSE OF DR. BRECKINKIDQE. 321 

rageously violated — they may talk of injuries that are obliged 
to be redressed — they may talk about guarantees without 
which they can submit to no further peace — and there is 
doubtless much that has force and much more that is captiva- 
ting to ardent minds in such expositions of our sad condition. 
For what problem half so terrible was ever agitated upon 
which it was not easy to advance much on every side of it? 
I will not consume the short time allowed to me in examining 
such views. What I assert, in answer to them all is, that we 
have overwhelming duties and incalculable interests which 
dictate a special line of conduct, the chief aim of which 
should be the preservation of the American Union, and 
therein of the American nation. 

To be more explicit, it seems to me that there are inestim- 
able blessings connected with the preservation of our National 
Union ; and that there are intolerable evils involved in its 
destruction. For the blessings : there is tlie blessing of peace 
amongst ourselves, there is the blessing of freedom to ourselves 
and to our posterity, there is the blessing of internal prosper- 
ity secured by that peace, and freedom, never before excelled, 
if attained, by any people ; there is the blessing of national 
independence secured by our invincible strength, against all 
the powers of the earth conil)ine(l ; there is the blessing of 
our glorious example to all nations and to all ages ; there is 
the blessing of irresistible power to do good to all peoples, 
and to prevent evil over the face of the whole earth : there is 
the blessing of an unfettered Gospel and an open Bible and a 
divine Saviour, more, and more manifested in our whole 
national life as that life deepens and spreads, subduing and 
possessing the widest and the noblest inheritance ever given to 
any people, and overflowing and fructifying all peoples besides. 
It is the problem sought to be solved from the beginning of 
time, and, to say, the least, the nearest approximation made to 
its solution, namely, the complete possession of freedom united 
with irresistible national force, and all directed to the glory of 
God and to the good of man. And this is that glorious estate 

VOL. I. — NO. 2. 10 



322 DISCOUKSE OF DR. BKECKINKIDGE. [JuilC, 

now declared to be in fearful peril, and which we are called 
upon to beseech God to preserve unto us. 

On the other hand, the evils of rending this nation. AVhich 
of the blessings that I have enumerated — and I have enume- 
rated only those that appeared to me to be the most ol)vious 
— which of these is there— peace, freedom, prosperity, inde- 
pendence, the glory of our example, the power to do good and 
to prevent evil, the opportunity to give permanent efficiency 
all over this continent, and in a certain degree all over this 
earth to the Gospel of God ; which of these blessings is there 
that may not be utterly lost to vast portions of the nation ; — 
which of them that may not be jeoparded over this whole 
continent ; which of them is there that may not depart for- 
evermore from us and our posterity in the attempt to destroy 
our oneness as a people, and in the results of that unparalleled 
self-destruction ? Besides all this, how obvious and how ter- 
rible are the evils over and above, which the very attempt 
begets, and which our after progress must necessarily make 
permanent if that attempt succeeds. First, we have already 
incurred the perils of universal bankruptcy before the first 
act is achieved by one of the least important of the thirty- 
three States. Secondly, we have already seen constitutiona'i 
government both in its essence and in its form trampled un- 
der foot by the convention of that State ; and all the powera 
of sovereignty itself, both ordinary and extraordinary, as- 
sumed by it in such a manner that life, liberty and property 
have no more security in South Carolina than anywhere un- 
der Heaven where absolute despotism or absolute anarchy^ 
prevails, except in the personal characters of the gentlemen 
who hold the power. Thirdly, we have already seen thai 
small community preparing to treat with foreign nations, 
and if need be introduce foreign armies into this country: 
headlong in the career in which she disdains all counsel, 
scorns all consultation and all entreaty, and treats all tics, all 
recollections, all existing engagements and obligations as if 
her ordinance of secession had not only denationalized that 



1861.] DISCOURSE OF DK. CRECKINRIDGE. 323 

community, but had extinguished all its past existence. 
Fourthly, we see the glorious flag of this Union torn down 
and a colonial flag floating in its place; yea, we see that 
community thrown into paroxysms of rage, and the Cabinet 
at "Washington thrown into confusion because in the harbor 
of Charleston our national flag instead of being still further 
dishonored, yet floats over a single tower ! What then did 
they expect, who sent to the harbor of Charleston, to occupy 
the national fortress there, the son of a companion of Wash- 
ington, a hero whose veins are full of revolutionary blood, 
and whose body is covered with honorable scars won in the 
service of his country? Why did they send that Kentucky 
hero there if they did not intend the place they put into his 
hands to be kept, to the last extremity? But I need not en- 
large upon this terrible aspect of what is coming to us all if 
the Union is destroyed. These are but the beginnings of sor- 
rows. The men and the parties who initiate the reign of 
lawless passion, rarely escape destruction amid the storms 
they create, but are unable to control. Law comes from the 
depth of eternity, and in its sublime sway is the nexus of the 
universe. Institutions grow ; they are not made. Desolated 
empires are never restored. All history furnishes no such ex- 
ample. If we desire to perish, all we have to do is to leap into 
this vortex of disunion. If we have any just conception of 
the solemnity of this day, let us beseech God that our coun- 
try shall not be torn to pieces ; and under the power of these 
solemnities let us quit ourselves like men in order to avert 
that most horrible of all national calamities. 

Let us consider, in the next place, those rights, as they are 
called, by means of which, and in their extreme exercise, all the 
calamities that threaten us are to be brought upon us at any 
moment: nay, are to be so brought upon us that our destruc- 
tion shall be perfectly regular, perfectly legal, perfectly con- 
stitutional ! In which case a system like ours — a system the 
most enduring of all others, whether we consider the history 
©f the past or the laws which enter into its composition — a 



324 DISCOURSE OF DR. BRECKINRIDGE. [.JunC, 

system the hardest of all others to be deranged, and the 
easiest of all to be readjusted when deranged ; such a system 
18 alleged to have a secret in it, designed expressly to kill it, 
at the option of the smallest fragment of it. I allude to the 
claim of the right of Nullification and the claim of the right 
of Secession as being Constitutional rights ; and I desire to 
explain myself briefly in regard to them. 

According to my comprehension there is a thorough and 
fundamental difference between the two. The power of Nul- 
lification, supposing it to exist, would be an extreme right 
within the Union, and is necessarily temporary in its effect, 
and promptly tends to the termination of the difficulty upon 
which it arises. And this settlement may occur by the action 
of our complex system of government in various ways. It 
may be in the way of some compromise of existing difficul- 
ties ; or in the way of repeal, by one party or the other, or in 
the modification of the obnoxious laws ; or in the way of 
some judicial decision settling the difficulty; or— which is 
the true remedy— instead of Nullification, by an appeal to the 
people at the polls, who are the source of all power in free 
governments, and bv obedience to their decisions when ren- 
dered — by voting, instead of fighting ; or, at the worst, by 
an appeal to arms ; but even in that case the result necessarily 
secures the continuance of the pre-existing system of govern- 
ment on the restoration of peace ; let that peace be by victory 
on which side you please. The doctrine of Nullification 
stands related to the doctrine of State Rights— precisely as the 
doctrine of consolidation stands related to the old federal 
doctrine of a strong central Goverment. In both cases, the 
theory of a great party has been pushed to a logical absurdity, 
which subverted our political system. That the will of the 
greater part should prevail — and that the smaller parts should 
have the power of appeal to this will, at the polls — and in 
judgment upon every principle of civil and political liberty 
— was the ultimate form in which this great doctrine entered 
into the political creed of that old Republican party which 



1861.] DISCOURSE OF DR. BRECKINRIDGE. 325 

came into power with Mr. Jefferson in 1801, and was ex- 
pounded as they held it in those famous resokitions of Ken- 
tucky and Virginia in the latter part of the last century. Its 
connection with the whole theory of every mixed political 
system, is not only absolute but is vital. More especially is 
it so with our complex system. It has been carried, as it 
stands connected with the constitutional, and nmch more 
with the reserved rights of the States, to an extreme on that 
side, opposite to the extreme of Consolidation. But even 
in its extremest form it bears no proportion in mischief 
to the doctrine of Secession. Considered in its true and 
original form, I judge it to be indispensable to the pres- 
ervation of our political system ; and that the opposite 
mode of interpreting our political duties, and rights and 
remedies, terminates in subjugating the States to the General 
Government, and in subjugating both the General Govern- 
ment and the exposition of every political principle to the 
Supreme Court of the United States. The former system is 
natural and permanent — the latter is absurd and invites re- 
bellion. This great phenomenon has occured in this country, 
that, by reason of the extraordinary ability of some of the 
advocates of the system which passed away in 1801, it has 
assumed a new form and a new life in general opinion ; and 
seconded by the peculiar constitution of the Supreme Court 
of the United States, the old Republican or Democratic no- 
tions upon this great subject, though constantly triumphant 
in the country, have been constantly disallowed in the inter- 
pretations of that court. I judge that the doctrine of Secession 
is an extreme reaction against this Federal interpretation of 
the relations of the States to each other and to the nation. 
For when you arrive at an interpretation which is final and 
hateful to immense parties and interests ; and there is no rem- 
edy but arms, secession or absolute submission ; the expres- 
sion of the popular will against the interpretation you have 
made, brings society to a condition that in an excitable race 
and amongst a fi-ee people can hardly be expected to be safe 



S26 DISCOURSE OF DR. BRECKINRIDGE. [JuIie, 

or easy to be managed. You hare theref.»re this perilous and 
extraordinary claim of the right of secession under this ex- 
treme reaction ; differing absolutely from the idea of the old 
States Rights' party, and differing absolutely even from nulli- 
fication itself. 

Secession is a proceeding which begins by tearing to pieces 
the whole fabric of government, both social and political. It 
begins by rendering all redress of all possible evils utterly 
impossible under the system that exists, for its very object is 
to desti'oy its existence. It begins by provoking war, and 
rendering its occurrence apparently inevitable, and its term- 
ination well-nigh impossible. Its very design is not to reform 
the administration of existing laws, not to obtain their repeal 
or modification, but to annihilate the institutions of the 
country, and to make many nations out of one. If it is the 
constitutional right of any State to do this, then we have no 
National Government, and never had any. Then, also, it is 
perfectly idle to speak of new Constitutions, since the new 
Constitutions can have no more force than the Constitution 
already despised and disobeyed. Then, also, the possibility 
is ended — ended in the very theory of the case, and illustrated 
in the utter failure of its practice — of uniting republican free- 
dom with national strength in any country, or under any form 
of government. But according to my belief, and according 
to the universal belief of the American people but a little 
while ago, no such right, legal or constitutional, as that of 
secession, does or can exist under any form of government, 
and least of all under such institutions as ours. 

And, first of all, no State in this Union ever had any 
sovereignty at all independent of and except as they were 
United States. When they speak of recovering their sover- 
eignty, when they speak of returning to their condition as 
sovereigns in which they were before they were members of 
the confederacy, called at first the United Colonies, and then 
the United States, they speak of a thing that is historically 
without any foundation. They were not States; they were 



1861.] DISCOURSE OF DE. BEECKINKIDGE. 327 

colonies of the British, the Spanish, the French, and the 
Dutch governments; they were colonies granted by royal 
charters to particular individuals, or particular companies. 
Pennsylvania was the estate, the property of William Penn ; 
Georgia, the larger part, perhaps the whole of it, of General 
Oglethorpe. They were settled under charters to individuals 
and to companies — settled as colonies of foreign kin^ and 
States by their subjects. As snch they revolted: as such, 
before their revolt, they united in a continental government, 
more or less complete; as such united colonies, they pro- 
nounced that famous Declaration of Independence, which, 
after a heroic struggle of seven years, still as united colonies, 
they made good. That great Washington, who led that great 
war, was the commander-in-chief for and in behalf of these 
united colonies. As such they were born States. The treaty 
of peace that made them independent States, was concluded 
with them altogether — as United States. What sovereignty 
did Kentucky ever have except the sovereignty that she has 
as a State of these United States, born at the same moment a 
State of the American Union and a separate sovereign State ? 
We were a district of Virginia. We became a State and 
we became one of the United States at the same moment, for 
the same purpose, and for good and all. What I mean by 
this, is to point out the fact that the complex system of 
government which we have in this country did always, does 
now, and, in the nature of the case, must contemplate these 
States as united into a common government, and that common 
government as really a part of our political system, as the 
particular institutions of the separate sovereignties are a part 
of our political system. And while, as you will observe, 
I have attempted, while repudiating the doctrine of nullifi- 
cation, to vindicate that doctrine of State Ilights, which, as I 
firmly believe, is an integral and indispensable part of our 
political system ; yet, on the other hand, the doctrine that we 
are a nation, and that we have a national government, is and 
always was just as truly a part of our system as the other. 



328 DISCOUKSE OF DK. CEECKINRIDGE, [Jime, 

And our political system always stood as much upon the 
basis that we are a nation, as it stood upon the basis that 
that nation is composed of sovereign States. They were 
born into both relations; so born that each State is equally 
and forever, by force of its very existence and the manner 
thereof, both a part of this American nation, and also a sov 
ereign State of itself. The people, therefore, can no more 
legally throw off their national allegiance than they can 
legally throw off their State allegiance; nor can any State 
any more legally absolve the allegiance of its people to the 
nation, than the nation can legally absolve the allegiance due 
by the people to the State they live in. Either attempt, 
considered in any legal, in any constitutional, in any historical 
light, is pure madness. 

Now the pretext of founding the right of secession upon 
the right to change or abolish the government, which is 
constitutionally secured to the people of the nation and the 
States, seems to me, and I say it with all the respect due to 
others, to be both immoral and absurd. Absurd, since they 
who claim to exercise it are, according to the very statement 
of the case, but an insignificant minority of those in whom 
the real right resides. It is a right vested by God, and 
recognized by our constitutions as residing in the greater 
part of those who are citizens under the constitution, which 
they change or abolish. But what, in the name of God, and 
all the possible and all the imaginable arrogance of South 
Carolina, could lead her to believe that she is the major part 
of all the people that profess allegiance to the Constitution of 
the United States ? And it is immoral, because it is trifling 
with the sacred rights of others, with the most solemn obliga- 
tions on our own part, and the most vital interests of all con- 
cerned. And it is both immoral and absurd in one, because, 
as a political pretext, its use in this manner invalidates and 
renders perilous and odious the grandest contribution of 
modern times to the science of government, and therein to 
the peace of society, the security of liberty, and the progress 



1861.] DISCOURSE OF DR. BRECKINRIDGE. 329 

of civilization ; namely, the giving constitutional validity to 
this natural right of men to change or to abolish the govern- 
ment under which they live, by voting, when the major part 
see fit to do so. It is trifling with this great natural right, 
legalized in all our American constitutions, fatally carica- 
turing and recklessly converting it into the most terrible 
engine of organized legal destruction. More than that: it is 
impossible, in the very nature of the case, and in the very 
nature of government, that any such legal power, or any 
such constitutional right, could exist; because its existence 
pre-supposes law to have changed its nature ; to have become 
mere advice ; and pre-supposes government to have changed 
its nature, and ceasing to be a permanent ordinance of God, 
to become a temporary instrument of evil in the hands of 
factions, as they successively arise. Above all j)]aces under 
heaven, no such right of destruction can exist under our 
American constitutions, since it is they that have devised 
this very remedy of voting instead of fighting; they that 
have made this natural right a constitutional right; they that 
have done it for the preservation and not for the ruin of 
society. And it has preserved, for more than seventy 
years, the noblest form of human society, in constant security, 
and it could, if justly exercised, preserve it forever. 

But let us go a little deeper still. It can Jiot be denied 
that the right of self-preservation, both in men and States, is 
a supreme right. In private persons, it is a right regulated 
by law, in all communities that have laws. Among nations, 
there is no common supreme authority, and it must be regu- 
lated in their intercourse with each other by the discretion of 
each ; and arms are the final appeal. In our system of gov- 
ernment, there is ample provision made. In all disputes 
between any State and a foreign nation, the General Govern- 
ment will protect and redress the State. In disputes between 
two States, the Supreme Court is the constitutional arbiter. 
It IS only in disputes that may arise between the General 
Government and a particular State that any serious difference 



330 DISCOUliSK OF DR. KKECKINRIDGE. [JunC, 

of opinion as to the remedy has manifested itself in this 
country; and on that subject it is the less necessary that I 
add any thing to what has been said when speaking of nulli- 
fication, as the grounds of our existing difficulties are not 
between disaflected States and the General Government 
chiefly, if at all ; but they are difficulties rather founded on 
opposite states of public opinion touching the institution of 
negro slavery, in the Northern and in the Southern States. 

It may be confidently asserted that if the power of nullifi- 
cation, or the power of secession, or both of them, were per- 
fectly constitutional rights, neither of them should be, under 
any circumstances, wantonly exercised, Nor should either 
of them, most especially the right of secession, ever be exer- 
cised except under extreme necessity. But if these powers, 
or either of them, is a mere usurpation, founded on no right 
whatever, then no State may resort to rebellion or revolution 
without, in the first place, such a necessary cause as may not 
be otherwise maintained ; or, in the second place, without 
such a prospect of success as justifies the evil of rebellion or 
revolution, or else such intolerable evils as justify the most 
desperate attempts. Now it is my profound conviction that 
nothing has occurred, that nothing exists, which justifies that 
revolution which has occurred in South Carolina, and which 
seems to be impending in other Southern States. Beyond all 
doubt, nothing has occurred of this description, connected with 
any other interest or topic, except that of negro slavery ; and 
connected with that, my deep assurance is, that the just and 
necessary cause of the slave States, may be otherwise main 
tained than by secession, revolution, or rebellion ; nay, thai 
it may be incomparably better maintained otherwise ; nay, 
that it can not be maintained in that way at all, and that the 
attempt to do so will be fatal as regards the avowed object, 
and pregnant with incalculable evils besides. 

In such discussions as these, the nature of the institution 
of slavery is perfectly immaterial. So long as the Union of 
the States survives, the constitutional guaranty and the fed- 



1861.] DI8C0UKSE OF DR. BRECKINRIDGE. 331 

eral power, which have proved adequate for more than sev- 
enty years, are that much added to whatever other force 
States or sections may possess to protect their rights. Nor is 
there, in the nature of the case, any reason why States with 
slaves and States without slaves, should not abide together in 
peace, as portions of the same great nation, as they have 
done from the beginning. The unhallowed passions of men ; 
the fanaticism of the times ; the mutual injuries and insults 
which portions of the people have inflicted on each other ; 
the cruel use which political parties have made of unnatural 
and transient popular excitements; and, I must add, the 
unjust, ofieusive, and unconstitutional enactments by various 
State Legislatures at the North ; tlie repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise by Congress ; the attempt of the Supreme Court 
to settle political principles deemed to be of vast importance 
by all parties, in the Dred Scott case, which principles were 
not in the case at all ; the subsequent conduct of the Federal 
Government and of the people in Kansas ; the total overthrow 
of the Whig and American parties, the division and defeat 
of the Democratic party, and the triumph of the Republican 
party; the ordinance of secession of South Carolina; the 
agitation pervading the whole nation, especially the greater 
part of the Southern States ; and to crown all, and if possible 
to make all desperate, the amazing conduct of the President 
of the United States amidst these great disorders : this is tlie 
sad outline of this slavery agitation, the posture of which for 
a moment is thus exhibited, no one knowing how soon new 
and fatal steps may hurry us still further. "What I assert in 
the face of so much that is painful and full of peril, and what 
I confidently rely will be the verdict of posterity, is that all 
this, terrible as it is, affords no justification for the secession 
of any single State of the Union — none for the disruption of 
the American Union. They who make the attempt, will find 
in it no remedy for the evils from which they flee. They 
who goad others to this fatal step, will find that they have 
themselves erred exceedingly. They who have had the lead 



382 DISCOUKSE OF DK. BRECKINRIDGE. [JuiIC, 

in both acts of madness, have no hope for good from coming 
ages, half so great, as that they may be utterly forgotten. 
Posterity will receive with scorn every plea that can be made 
for thirty millions of free people, professing to be Christian, 
in extenuation of the unparalleled folly of their self destruc- 
tion, by reason that they could not deal successfully with 
three or four millions of African slaves, scattered amongst 
them. Oh ! everlasting infamy, that the children of Wash- 
ington did not know how to be free ! Oh ! degradation still 
deeper, that children of God did not know how to be just and 
to forbear with one another ! 

It is said, however, it is now too late. — The evil is already 
done. South Carolina has already gone. Florida, it is most 
likely went yesterday, or will go to-day, even while we are 
pleading with one another and with God to put a better mind 
in her. Soon, it may be possible within the present month, 
all the Cotton States will go. We, it is added, by reason of 
being a slave State, must also go. Our destiny, they say, 
our interests, our duty, our all, is bound up with theirs, and 
we must go together. If this be your mind, distinctly made 
up, then the whole services of this day are a national mock- 
ery of God ; a national attempt to make our passionate im- 
pulses assume the dignity of divine suggestions, and thus 
seduce the Ruler of the Universe into complicity with our 
sins and follies, through which all our miseries are inflicted 
upon us. Let it be admitted that a certain number of States, 
and that considerable, will attempt to form a Southern Con- 
federacy, or to form as many new sovereignties as there are 
seceding States. Let it be assumed that either of these results 
is achieved, and that either by way of peace or by war. Let all 
be admitted. — What then ? Thirteen States by their delegates 
formed the present Constitution, more than seventy years ago. 
By the terms of the Constitution itself, it was to be enforced 
when any nine of these thirteen States adopted it — whether 
by convention of their people or otherwise is immaterial to 
the present matter. Thirteen States made the Constitution 



1861.1 DISCOURSE OF DK. liRECKINKIDGE. 333 

by their delegates. A clause is inserted in it that it shall go 
into effect when any nine of the thirteen States adopt it, let 
any four refuse as they might. If they had refused what 
would have happened would have been, that these four States, 
born States, and born United States, by the Declaration of In- 
dependence, by the war of the Revolution, by the peace with 
Great Britain, and by the articles of confederation, would, by 
a common agreement among the whole thirteen, have refused 
to go further or to make any stronger national government ; 
while the other nine would have gone further and made that 
stronger national government. But such was the desire of all 
parties that there should be no separation of tlie States at all, 
tliat the whole thirteen unanimously adopted the new Consti- 
tution, putting a clause into it that it should not go into eflect 
unless a majority so great as nine to four would sign it. I say 
if a minority of States had not adopted the new Constitution, 
it would have occurred, that they would have passed by com- 
mon consent into a new condition, and for the iir^it time have 
become separate sovereign States. As you well know, none of 
them refused permanently. What I make this statement for, 
18 to show that, taking that principle as just and permanent, 
as clearly laid down in the Constitution, it requires at least 
eleven States out of the existing thirty-three States to destroy, 
or affect in the slightest degree, the question as to whether or 
not the remaining States are the United States of America, 
under the same Constitution. Twenty-two States, according to 
that principle, left after eleven had seceded, would be as really 
the United States of America under that Federal Constitu- 
tion, as they were before, according to the fundamental prin- 
ciple involved in the original mode of giving validity to the 
Constitution. Kentucky would still be as really one of these 
United States of America, as she was at first when, as a dis- 
trict of Virginia, who was one of the nine adopting States, 
she became, as such district, a part thereof. And by conse- 
quence, a secession of less than eleven States, can in no event, 
and upon no nypothesis, eveii bu much as embarrass Ken- 



334 DISCOURSE OF DR. BRECKINRIDGE. [June, 

tucky in determining for herself, what her duty, her honor, 
and her safety require her to do. 

This fact is so perfectly obvious, that I presume if the six 
New England States were to revolt, and to establish a new 
confederacy, there is not a man in the State of Kentucky who 
would be led thereby to suppose, that our relations with the 
Union and the Constitution were in the slighest degree af- 
fected ; or that we were on that account under the slightest 
obligation to revolt also. It may sound harsh, but I am very 
much inclined to think that there are many thousands of men 
in Kentucky who might be apt to suppose that the secession 
of the New England States would be a capital reason why 
nobody else should secede. It is the principle however, 
which I am attempting to explain. 

The answer to this view, I am aware is, that we are a slave 
State, and that our relations are therefore necessarily different 
with respect to other slave States, as compared with the free 
States, or with the nation at large. The reply to which is 
various : First. The Institution of Slavery, as it exists in this 
country, presents a threefold, and very distinct aspect. First, 
the aspect of it in those States whose great staples are rice, 
sugar and cotton, commonly and well enough expressed by 
calling them the Cotton States. Then the aspect of it pre- 
sented by those States in portions of which those staples are 
raised, and in other portions of which they are not ; which 
we may well enough call the mixed portion of the slave States. 
And then its aspect in those slave States which are not pro- 
ducers of those great staples, in the midst of which, and out 
of which these great commotions come. What I assert is, 
that the relation of slavery to the community, and the relation 
of the community by reason of slavery to the General Gov- 
ernment and the world, is widely different in all three of these 
classes of States. The relation of slavery to the community, 
to the government and to our future, in Missouri, iu Kentucky, 
in Virginia, in Maryland, in Delaware, is evidently different 
from the relation of slavery in all these respects iu Louisiana, 



1861.] DISCOUKSE OF DK. BKECKINKIOE, 335 

in South Carolina and in all the other Cotton States. lu the 
meantime also, the relation is different from both of those, 
wherein it exists in what I have called the mixed States ; in 
Arkansas, part of which is a farming country and a part of 
which is thoroughly planting ; in Tennessee, part cotton, and 
the eastern part a mountainous farming country; in Texas 
and North Carolina, where similar facts exist ; and perhaps 
in some other States. What I desire is that you get the idea 
I have of the matter ; that while it is true that all the slave 
States have certain ties and sympathies between them which 
are real, and ought not to be broken ; yet, on the other hand, 
it is extremely easy to carry this idea to a fatal and a false 
extent, and to ruin ourselves forever under the illusion begot- 
ten thereby. In Kentucky, the institution of slavery exists 
about in the proportion of one slave to four white people, and 
the gap between the two races is widening at every census. 
In South Carolina there are about five slaves to three white 
persons, and the increment is on the slave side. In the 
Cotton States, I know of no way in which the institution of 
slavery can be dealt with at all, except by keeping the relation 
as it stands, as an intregal portion of the body politic, unman- 
ageable except in the present relation of the negro to the 
white man : and, in this posture, it is the duty of the nation 
to protect and defend the Cotton States. In regard to Ken- 
tucky, the institution of slavery is in such a position that the 
people can do with it whatever they may see fit, both now, 
and at any future period, without being obliged, by reason 
of it, to resort to any desperate expedient, in any direction. 

The state of things I have sketched necessarily produces a 
general resemblance, indeed, because slavery is general — but, 
at the same time innumerable diversities, responsive to the 
very condition of slavery, of its prospects,andof its influence 
in the body politic, in the different slave States. And you 
never committed a greater folly than you will commit if, dis- 
regarding these things, you allow this single consideration — 
that you are a slave State — to swallow up every other cod 



^m. 



336 DISCOURSE OF DR. BRECKINRIDGE. [June, 

sideration, and control your whole action in this gre^t crisis. 
We in Kentucky are tolerant of opinion. Inform yourselves 
of what is passing, of an opposite character, throughout 
South Carolina : and reflect on the change that must pass on 
you, before you would be prepared to tear down the most 
venerable institutions, to insult the proudest emblems of your 
country's glory, and to treat constitutions and laws as if they 
were play-things for children; before you are prepared to 
descend from your present noble posture, and surrender your- 
self to the guidance and dictation of such counsels and such 
statesmen as rule this disunion movement. Nothing seems 
to me more obvious, and nothing is more important to be 
pressed on your attention at this moment, than that the non- 
cotton States stand in a position radically difterent in all 
respects from the position in which the Cotton States stand, 
both with regard to the institution of slavery, and with regard 
to the balance of the nation. The result is that all these 
States, the Cotton States, and the mixed States, and the non- 
cotton slave States, and the free States, may enjoy peace and 
may enjoy prosperity under a common government, and in a 
common Union, as they have done from the beginning ; where 
the rights of all, and the interests of all may be fespected and 
protected, and yet where the interests of every portion must 
be regulated by some general consideration of the interests 
which are common to every body. On the other hand, in a 
confederacy where cotton is the great idea and end, it is utterly 
impossible for the mixed, much more for the non-cotton States, 
to protect adequately any of their rights, except the right of 
slavery, to carry out any of their purposes except purposes 
connected with slavery, to inaugurate any system of polic_y 
or even to be free, otherwise than as they servilely follow the 
lead, and bow to the rule of the Cotton States. The very 
instant you enter a confederacy in which all is regulated and 
created by the supreme interest of cotton, every thing precious 
and distinctive of you, is jeoparded ! Do you want the slave 
trade re-opened ? Do you want free trade and direct taxation ? 



1861.] DISCOUKSE OF DR. BKECKINRIDGE. 



337 



Do you want some millions more of African cannibals thrown 
amongst you broadcast tlirongliout the whole slave States? 
Do you want to begin a war which shall end when you have 
taken possession of the whole Southern part of this continent 
down to the isthmus of Darien ? If your design is to accept 
the principles, purposes and policy, which are openly avowed 
in the interest of secession, and which you see exhibited on 
a small scale, but in their essence, in South Carolina ; if that 
is your notion of regulated freedom and the perfect security 
of life and property; if that is your understanding of high 
national prosperity, where the great idea is more negroes, 
more cotton, direct taxes, free imports from all nations, and 
the conquest of all outlaying land that will bring cotton ; then, 
undoubtedly, Kentucky is no longer what she has been, and 
her new career, beginning with secession, leads her tar away 
from her strength and her renown. 

The second suggestion I have to make to you is, that if the 
slave line is made the line of division, all the slave States 
seceding from the Union, and all the free States standing 
unitedly by the Union; what I assort in that case is, that the 
possibility of the perpetuity of negro slavery in any border 
State terminates at once. In our affected jceal for slavery, we 
mil have taken the most effectual means of extinguishing it; 
and that in the most disastrous of all possible ways. On the 
contrary, if this Union is to be saved, it is by the cordial 
sympathy of the border States on one side and on the other 
side of the slave line that it nmst be saved. We have noth- 
ing to hope from the extreme States on either side ; nothing 
from the passionate violence of the extreme South — nothing 
from the turbulent tanaticism of tlie extreme North. It is 
along that slave line — and in the spirit of mutual confidence, 
and the sense of a common interest of tiie people on the north 
and on the south of that line, that the nation must seek the 
instruments of its safety. It is Ohio, Indiana, IlHnois, Penn- 
sylvania, New Jersey, on the one side ; and Maryland, Dela- 
ware, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri — God send that I might 

VOL. I. — NO. 2. 11 



3S8 DIS(;OUKSE OF DB. BRECKINKIDGE, [June, 

add with confidence Tennessee and North Carolina — on the 
other side ; these are the States that are competent to save 
this Union. Nothing, therefore, can be more suicidal, than 
for the border slave States to adopt any line of conduct 
which can justly deprive them of the sympathy and confi- 
dence of the border free States — now largely possessed by 
them. And nothing is more certain than that a patriotic 
devotion to the Union, and a willingness to do all that honor- 
able men should do, or moderate men ask, in order to pre- 
serve it — is as strongly prevalent at this moment, among the 
people of the border free States, as amongst those of the 
border slave States. The great central States I have enumer- 
ated — must necessarily control the fate both of the nation 
and of the continent — whenever they act in concert ; and the 
fate, both of the nation and the continent, is utterly inscru- 
table after the division of them on the slave line — except that 
we know that when Samson is shorn of his strength, the 
enemies of Israel and of God will make the land desolate. 
Fronting on the Atlantic Ocean through many degrees of lati- 
tude, running back across the continent so as to include an 
area larger than all Western Europe, and finer than any of 
equal extent upon the globe, embracing a population inferior 
to none on earth, and sufliciently numerous at present to con- 
stitute a great nation; it is this immense power, free, to a 
great extent, from the opposite and intractable fanaticisms of 
the extreme States on both sides of it, that is charged with 
the preservation of our national institutions, and with them 
our national power and glory. There are two aspects of the 
case thus put — in either of which success by peaceful means, 
is impossible: first, if these great central States fail to appre- 
hend this part of the great mission committed to them; 
secondly, if the Cotton States, following the example of South 
Carolina — or the Northern States adhering to extreme pur- 
poses in the opposite direction — by either means render all 
peaceful adjustment impossible. 

But even in that case, the mission of these great States is 



1861.] DlSCOUliSK OF DU. BKECKINKIDGE. 339 

not ended. If under the curse of God, and the madness of 
the extreme Northern and Southern States, the preservation 
of the Union should be impossible ; then it belongs to this 
immense central power, to re-construct the nation, upon the 
slave line as its central idea ; and thus perpetuate our insti- 
tutions, our ])rinciples, and our hopes, with an unclianged 
nationality. For even they who act in the mere interests of 
slavery, ought to see, that after the secession of the Cotton 
States, the border slave States are obliged, even for the sake 
of slavery, to be destroyed, or to adhere to the Union as long 
as any Union exists ; and that if the Union were utterly de- 
stroyed, its re-construction upon the slave line, is the solitary 
condition on which slavery can exist in security anywhere, 
or can exist at all in any bordei- State. 

I have considered three possible solutions of the existing 
state of things: The preservation of the Union as it is; the 
probable secession of the cotton slave States, and the effect 
thereof upon the Union, and upon the coiu'se Kentucky ought 
to take ; the total destruction of the Union, and its re-con- 
struction upon the slave line. I have considered the whole 
matter, from the point of view understood to be taken by the 
President of the United States ; namely : that he judges 
there is no power in the General Government to prevent, by 
force, its own dissolution by means of the secession of the 
States ; and I have done this, because however ruinous or absurd 
any one may suppose the views of the President to be, it is 
nevertheless under their sway that the first acts of our impend- 
ing revolutions are progressing. Under the same helpless aspect 
of the General Government, there remain two more possible 
solutions of the posture and duty of Kentucky, and other 
States simihirly situated. The first of these is, that in the 
progress of events, it may well become the border slave States 
to unite themselves into a separate confederacy ; the second 
is, that it may well become Kentucky, under various contin- 
gencies, to assume a separate sovereign position, and act by 
herself. Having clearly stated my own conclusions, I will 



340 DISCOUKSE OF DB. BRECKINRIDGE. [June, 

only saj that the first of these two results is not one to be 
sought as desirable in itself, but only as an alternative to be 
preferred to more dangerous arrangements. For my unal- 
terable conviction is, that the slave line is the only permanent 
and secure basis of a confederacy for the slave States, and 
especially for the border slave States, and that the union of 
free and slave States, in the same confederacy, is the indis- 
pensable condition of the peaceful and secure existence of 
slavery. As to the possible isolation of Kentucky, this also, it 
seems to me, is not a result to be sought. If it should occur as 
the alternative to evils still greater, Kentucky ought to embrace 
it with calmness and dignity, and, awaiting the progress of 
events, show by her wisdom, her courage, her moderation, 
her invincible rectitude, both to this age and to all that are 
to come, how fully she understood in the midst of a gain- 
saying and backsliding generation, that no people ever per- 
formed anything glorious who did not trust God, who did 
not love their country, and who were not faithful to their 
oaths. 

It seems to me, therefore, that the immediate duty of Ken- 
tucky may be clearly stated in very few words. 

First. To stand by the Constitution and the Union of the 
country, to the last extremity. 

Second. To prevent, as for the moment the impending 
and immediate danger, all attempts to seduce her, all 
attempts to terrify her, into the taking of any step i)icon- 
sistent with her own constitution and laws — any step disre- 
gardful of the constitution and laws of the United States, any 
step which can possibly compromise her position, or draw her 
on otherwise than by her own free choice deliberately ex- 
pressed at the polls, according to her existing laws and con- 
stitution, whereby she will choose her own destiny. 

Tfiird. To settle in her heart that the rending of this 
Union on the slave line is, for her, whatever it may be for 
others, the most fatal issue that the times can have ; and the 
doing this in such a way as to subject her to the dominion of 



1861.] DISCOURSE OF DR. BRECKINRIDGE. 341 

the Cotton States for all time to come, is the very worst form 
of that most fatal issue. 

After all, my friends, after all, — we have the great promise 
of God that all things shall work together for good to them 
that love him. I do not know but that it may be the mind 
of God and his divine purpose to break this Union up, and 
to make of it other nations, that shall at last be more 
powerful than it, unitedly, would have been. I do not know, 
I do not pretend to say, how the Lord will use the passions 
of men to glorify his name. He restrains the remainder of 
wrath and will cause the wrath of man to praise him. We 
have his divine assurance that all nations that have gone 
before us, and all that will follow us, and we ourselves, by 
our rise, by our progress, and alas ! by our decay and ruin, 
are but instruments of his infinite purpose, and means in his 
adorable providence, whereby the everlasting reign of Mes- 
siah, the Christ of God, is to be made absolute and universal. 

Great then, is our consolation, as we tremble for our 
country, to be confident in our Lord ! Great is our comfort, 
as we bewail the miseries which have befallen our glorious 
inheritance, to know that the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth ! 
Infinitely precious is the assurance, amidst the trials now 
impending, and the woes which threaten us, that the heroic 
self-devotion with which our personal duty is discharged, is 
one part of our fitness to become partakers of the inheritance 
of the saints in light ! 



1. Our Country — its Peril — its Deliverance: Art. IV. of the Danville 

Quarterly Review for March, 1861. 
2 I^TATK OK TiiK COUNTRY: Art. V. of the Danville Quarterly Review for 

June, 1861. 
3. Disi'ouR.sE, delivered on the day of National Humiliation, Jan. 4, 1861, 

at Lexington, Ky. 



THREE ARTICLES 



STATE OF THE COUNTRY, 



BY THE 
REV. ROBERT J. BRECKINRIDGE, D.D., L.L.D., 

FBOFBSSOB IN DANVILLE THEOLOOICAL SEMINARY. 



RKPiilNTED FROM THE DANVILLE QUARTERLY REVIEW, POR JUNE, 1861. 



CINCINNATI; 

PUBLISHED AT THB OFFICE OF THE DANVILLE RBVIBW, 

No. 26 WEST FOURTH STREET. 

1861. 



L — ' vJ 



Ir^Liblislier's Circular. 



DANVILLE QUARTERLY REVIEW. 

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high rank at once among the ablest in America or Europe — appeared in ]\larch, 
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) Professors in Dan- 
L villa Theological 
[ Seminary. 

Professors in Centre College, Danville. 



Rev. ROBERT J. BRECKINRIDGE, D.D., LL.D., 

" EDWARD P. HUMPHREY, D. D., 

" STEPHEN YERKES, D. D., 

" JOSEPH T. SMITH, D.D., 

" JACOB COOPER, Ph. D., 

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THE SEPTEMBER NUMBER 

will contain Articles on the -'New Gospel of Rationalism,' the "Doctrine of 
Imputation," and probably one by Dr. Breckinridge reviewing the proceedings 
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1 E U. . 'f^Q 



